


The Time That is Given Us

by ProlixInSpace



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 04, Alternate Season/Series 05, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Because that's how the world is, Brainwashing, Canon Compliant, Canon Compliant through Season 3, Coda, Cults, F/F, F/M, How I would continue the story, Lissa does not exist, M/M, Major Character Injury, Major Character Undeath, Mental Health Issues, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, Politics, Post-Canon, Pretty frequently, References to Depression, Tags Are Hard, Tags May Change, Underage Drinking, Viren Tries His Best (The Dragon Prince), Viren's ex is not Lissa
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:20:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 228,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22265485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProlixInSpace/pseuds/ProlixInSpace
Summary: "Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push -- in just the right place -- it can be tipped."-Malcolm Gladwell(Picks up from the end of season 3.)
Relationships: Aaravos/Ziard (The Dragon Prince), Amaya/Janai (The Dragon Prince), Callum/Rayla (The Dragon Prince), Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Soren/Original Character(s), Viren/Viren's Ex-Wife (The Dragon Prince)
Comments: 297
Kudos: 275





	1. Book Four: Earth | Chapter One: The Wet Clay

**Author's Note:**

> My intention with this story is to carry the story forward from the end of season 3, as it would go if I were the one in charge of telling it, using the same format we've already been provided by the show, hence the number of total chapters. There is a plan and an outline. Current update schedule is roughly two weeks per "episode" give or take a few days from chapter to chapter. 
> 
> Note: This was written prior to the release of the novelization. Soren and Claudia's mother is not the person described in the book, but an entirely different person of my own devising.

**Book Four: Earth**

**Chapter 1: Wet Clay**

The day that Sigrin meets him is, in every way, horrendous. The weather is dismal. It is cold, and not the clean, tranquil cold of the mountain woods to which she is accustomed, but a damp, gray chill that creeps in off the bay and steals the energy right from her bones. 

There is no snow, despite this, but rather a spitting rain that turns the road to a treacherous, half-frozen mush and makes it unbearable to spend any time out of doors. She should know -- she has _been_ out of doors for days, in the saddle for much of it, leading to aggravating congestion and a pronounced soreness in her hips and back. When she finally arrives in the town of Rihen, every inn and tavern and public house is already crowded with self-important pilgarlics, and they make it almost equally unbearable to be anywhere _indoors_ as well. 

The town is playing host to the annual Conference of the Guild of Dark Mages, not especially large as guilds go, but what it lacks in membership it more than makes up for in garrulousness. Over a pint of some god-awful excuse for mead, Sigrin considers other places she would rather be: in a dragon’s den, for example, or perhaps imprisoned in a cage above the river of lava at the border.

At least that would be warm.

Unfortunately, King Florian’s offer is one she couldn’t refuse: a handsome budget with which to purchase rare spell components for the royal high mage, who no longer travels well, and the promise that she would be permitted to keep a full _third_ of everything she could bring back to Del Bar.

Lord Ehnia, the dotard, is as likely as not to put his share in a laboratory cabinet somewhere to rot away beyond usefulness, but _oh,_ the things Sigrin could do with her allotment! The ailments she could cure! The crops she could encourage! The protection she could provide! It would be a boon for every village within a day’s travel of Kráka Cottage and beyond, all of whom have come to depend on the magic to be found there. King Florian and Lord Ehnia and the whole noble lot could shrivel up and blow away as far as she is concerned, but she has no intention of letting slip this chance, on behalf of the people of the mountain.

Still, if she has to listen to one more velvet-and-brocade-clad man from the lowlands bloviate about spells to improve the looks of courtly ladies, or to help a noble house ensure a male heir, Sigrin is sure her eyes will roll back in her head permanently.

If she is to survive this, she’ll have to be drinking something stronger. 

“--No, you’re-- that’s _completely_ wrong--” 

Do they do _anything_ but prattle past one another?

She steps to the side of the argument. Rather than shouting over the din, she leans over the sticky counter and speaks directly into the barmaid’s ear: _a dram of clarh in a glass of ale, can you manage?_

She glances to her right, where the two windbags threaten to blow the walls down, and the barmaid does a familiar kind of grimace-smirk in understanding. It’s good to have an ally, at least. 

“It’s pure poppycock,” says the balding man with the well-shined shoes. He must be at least local-ish, he doesn’t look like someone who’s traveled very far. 

“Have you _tried_ it?” The younger man leans back on his elbow, his posture tightly controlled into an affectation of relaxing. In truth, he doesn’t look like he’s ever heard the word _relaxed._

“I don’t _need_ to try it, it’s… it’s Evenerean Whispers, for goodness’ sake. I’m not saying that nothing good came out of the reconstructed journals, but what would be the point of--”

“Of what?” The tense young man cuts in, “Of considering that the people of Elarion did it this way for hundreds of years, and perhaps there might have been a _reason?”_

“For soaking and drying caewolf ashes?” The bald man is incredulous. “What point could there possibly be, when the product winds up the same as it started at the end of it all? Soaked, dried, what’s the difference between that and doing none of it? It’s a waste of time. We’re meant to be living in a more enlightened age, not taking seriously the superstitious claptrap of little old woodsmages… What was your name again?”

The younger man ignores the question and says something dismissive -- rightfully so, if anyone were to ask Sigrin, which they don’t. (If they were to ask her, she'd also remind them that the reconstructed journals suggest the soaking and drying be done with seawater, and _that_ would surely derail the entire exchange.)

Should she be more generous to them, maybe? They _are_ fellow guild members, after all, and there’s a sense that dark mages have a hard enough time of things _without_ internal backbiting.

Her drink is set on the counter, and it smells strongly, astringently of clarh, suggesting a heavy-handed pour of the stuff. The barmaid really _is_ sympathetic. Sigrin takes it in her left hand, focus fixed on her sanctuary, her little corner table. 

Tomorrow is the main market day for the gathering, and she’ll be glad to spend the king’s money, get what she came for, and be gone. For tonight, the plan is clear: to drink until she can sleep through whatever racket the revelers cause.

 _The plan_ falls apart almost immediately.

Somewhere at the edge of her attention, there is the sound of impact, of an impassioned hand hitting wood, and maybe if she cared, she’d notice as the balding local is shoved rudely out of the way, but as it is, she couldn’t care less about either one of them. Perhaps she should, she will think later, because she’s one step away from the bar when the angry-young-man-with-a-good-point crashes directly into her. 

His shoulder is solid and it plows right through hers and throws her off balance. Fortunately she is yet sober enough to catch herself before falling, but the resulting stumble comes at the expense of her drink _and_ her dress. The former falls free of the hand that shoots out for balance, and the latter is consequently drenched.

To add insult to injury, the glass strikes the ground and shatters, so every eye turns to look at her, soaking wet and glaring down a man going from annoyed to abashed faster than she would think possible. The room waits for her reaction -- will she slap him, they must wonder? Or do something worse? As argumentative as he’s been with the elder set, he doesn’t have the mood of the crowd with him. She could strike him and get away with it. 

“I--oh god, I’m sorry, I can’t believe--” 

She is gone before he can finish apologizing. Let them all be disappointed.

In the end, she marries him. 

Their love is a strange thing, nothing at all like the romance in the books that Sigrin so enjoys. It is not a consuming flame, but rather it is the love between wind and rocks that slowly forms a canyon, eventual, inevitable, certain. 

In Rihen, she avoids him, gives him no chance at all make it up to her before she leaves town the following afternoon. He must have felt guilty, she supposes, and that must be why he writes the first letter (which identifies him: Viren, of Katolis.)

Life is quiet when the letter comes, and that must be why she responds. Besides, the page is full of rich imagery and clever wordplay. Anyone whose letters are at least as entertaining as a book surely deserves an answer.

They correspond for nearly a year, and before she knows it, she’s willingly offering King Florian the service of attending the conference again, surprising herself with how eager she is to see the fellow again under better circumstances, delighted to find, when she arrives, that the same excitement seems to buzz beneath his skin as well.

This trip is much better than the last.

Afterward, Viren does the most bizarre thing she can imagine: he hikes through the snow to visit her, without any appointment and at his own great peril. She allows him to stay with her, provided a firm understanding that she already keeps her world the way she likes it, and he must remain out of the way of both herself and her birds. They spend winter on the mountain, with Viren performing absurd gestures, giving ridiculous gifts, and ingratiating himself with the families she serves (who eagerly join in his romantic conspiracy.) 

In short, he finds his way into her heart with a persistence to rival the mountain itself.

He at least indulges her reserved nature with a private wedding. As such, while the day is full of magic, they use no glamor, and in the ceremony, she traces the marks on his skin, as he traces hers. Whatever the world will say of them, they promise to always remind one another of the truth. 

Katolis, and the life that Viren shows her there, is like stepping out of the real world and into a fantasy. 

The library alone is so grand that she feels she’s died and gone to the clearing at the end of the path when she sees it. Even King Florian himself does not maintain the depth and breadth of reading material that she finds there, and she devours it as though starved. It becomes common knowledge that if one cannot locate either of them, Viren or Sigrin, they can almost certainly be found by a fire somewhere, each lost in their own book, but no less together for it.

They are inseparable: “Virenandsigrin” enjoys a brief existence as a shared word, so habitually is it said. They work together at magic, with the full budget and force of the crown behind them, and the abundance is intoxicating. They write papers together, they attend guild events together (with Viren at her side this is _nearly_ tolerable) and, along the way, they have a son (who so closely resembles Sigrin’s stalwart explorer of a father that they give the baby his grandfather’s name) and a daughter after.

Sigrin is so caught up in the beauty of the sea that she does not realize she has slipped beneath the waves until she is already drowning. 

Her personal magpies carry her messages to the mountains, their white patches marking them as her familiars, a mimic of the thick rope of white in her own black braid. Her people, the villagers she once served, recognize her birds and respond with the honesty she expects. The news is poor. They are too proud to ask her to come home, but their desperation is writ clear between the lines of every page.

Viren holds her, tells her that she has already given the mountain far more than she owes it, that she has earned her place, that she can do more good for the world from here, that her family needs her. 

He is right -- in every way that matters, and she knows it -- but the lead weight on her heart drags it ever deeper regardless. 

This is not something that he can easily accept. She needs to be needed, he claims, more than she needs _him_. She loves her mountain more than her family, he accuses, more than her children. 

He is privileged, she retorts, time and time again, made soft by noble life, too far from the toil on the ground.

She chose this life too, he always reminds her, his aim ever-true. 

_I’ve saved more people’s lives from this castle than you have ever_ met _in the forest!_ He says to her once, and the venom from that sting travels deep into her blood. The fact that he is completely correct does not soothe the wound. 

Her resistance, her growing obsession with conditions on the mountain, is a rejection to him. One by one, their hooks in one another detach, and the fewer there are, the more strain lies on each. He does not believe in or understand or sympathize with what is inside her, two loves, two worlds, two selves warring for the same short human life, where every victory is pyrrhic.

She finds herself wishing he were cruel. The women in the novels have terrible, thoughtless, dismissive husbands, husbands who hurt them, who neglect them, who are bad fathers, who make the choice to leave easy and righteous. Sigrin lacks this luxury. Viren is often angry, lashing out from a posture of pain, but he never once makes anything easy. 

It is not that they have _many arguments_ , not really. Rather, it is a singular same argument, in many flavors, from many angles, in all its infinite varieties. She knows this, and still she fights it, again and again, night after night, because she wants more than anything to force Viren to find some combination of words, some incantation that makes the truth untrue:

She has to go back to Del Bar, to her mountain.

She cannot leave her people without a mage, and there is no other mage that will have them. 

The children have a whole town’s worth of people looking after them, adoring them: their nurses, their teachers, their trainers, their friends and above all else, their father. The people of the mountain have nothing but their own stubborn nature, and while that is an asset, it will not save them from hunger, disease, and other ill-fortunes. 

Everything that Soren and Claudia need to thrive is in the castle, and so, in her way, she persuades each of them to remain. The process reminds her of the worst corners of magic, of the spells that cost the most because they mean the most, because they are the most necessary, the spells that shred the heart. 

On the day that she leaves, she and Viren have hardly spoken in weeks, their tense silence a dark mirror of the settled quiet they used to enjoy. Still, he rides with her to the edge of the city that surrounds the castle and gives her a parting gift:

It is a single black candle that smells of copper and damp moss and is cool to the touch. 

He holds its mate as well, and she knows instantly what he means to do, and she cooperates with a whole heart. In that brief moment, they are again united with a shared wish.

For the better part of ten years, in the window of a little cottage in the wildest, most inhospitable mountains of Del Bar, a black candle burns endlessly with a violet flame.

The news of King Harrow’s death reaches her just before her own king is similarly killed, and his widow, Gunhild, takes the mantle of leadership. Through channels, she learns that the queen, furious and fierce and hungry for vengeance, has elected to send her forces into Xadia where her husband would not. 

She cannot fault Gunhild. When she hears the tale from a young man seeking a tincture to bring with him on his deployment, she thinks that she would likely do the same. Even now, if elves and dragons were to snuff out her husband’s life, she thinks that her body itself would become a flame that would stop at nothing to burn Xadia to the ground. 

Days later, when the candle goes out, Sigrin discovers that she was wrong. She does not become a flame. 

Instead, she becomes as a stone, loosed by a rockslide.

When she leaves, she leaves nearly everything behind, with the hope that one of the village youths or mothers with an aptitude for reading and an interest in magic will take up the mantle of Kráka Cottage, the way she did. 

Her familiars are set free to do as they will, with the exception of two pied ravens, each of which is given a letter and charged with a task she knows may be futile. 

She rides out, almost certain that she will never return. 

* * *

At the moment of truth, Claudia flinches. She’ll scold herself for it a hundred times in the days to come, and for no reason -- it isn’t as if seeing the moment of impact would help anything, change anything. Still, there is some sense that she owed it to her father to bear witness, especially given how it doesn’t seem as if anyone _else_ cares what happens to him. 

Thanks to her flinch, however, she gets a clear look at what happens after: the miraculous rescue of the murderer. Why is she not surprised? 

She files that away for later. If she gets caught up untangling how she feels about it all, she’ll lose focus, and there’s no wiggle room at all now. All her practice, her study, her training, and this is the real thing, with no space for anything less than perfect choices, perfect plans, perfect execution. 

High above the ground, neither of them even notice Claudia as she ducks back beneath a slant of stone and presses herself defensively against it. 

If she’s honest, she’s already made one mistake, which leaves her all the more desperate to avoid making another.

_You’ve got this, Claudia. Make mom and dad proud._

The aftermath of the battle has already begun: The early evening light glints off the points of Sunfire helmets as the elves sweep the battlefield for survivors, for wounded, for prisoners. When she last looked, they were in the crater that Claudia herself created, pulling bodies up the curved slopes.

 _Breathe. Just breathe, and focus. One thing at a time,_ she says to herself, in a voice that sounds too much like dad’s. _What’s the next step?_ Just _the next step._

Get to safety, that’s what. Find somewhere she can gather herself properly.

They’ll be looking for her already, and for the staff she carries and will not surrender, even as its size and sparkle threaten to reveal her on the rolling plain. Briefly, she considers leaving it behind in the hope that it would distract pursuers, but every time she so much as glances into the darkened core, she is struck with an instinct -- a need -- to keep it close.

Her current position seems lose-lose, her only choices being to dart out from cover and be spotted now, or stay and be spotted later. She gives surrender its due consideration. Would it be better? She’d be imprisoned, maybe killed, _definitely_ embarrassed. For some reason it’s that last thing that motivates her to find another way.

Luck is with her. A shinemouse skitters along the base of the very same rock that Claudia has chosen to hide behind. _(They’re crepuscular, do you know what that means?_ Dad taught her the word, which she then taught to Soren at the dinner table.) As she plucks it from the ground, she considers that they’re both here for the same reason: concealment from predators. 

The staff rests against her shoulder. One hand forms a cage for the little rodent while the other strokes its head. “Sorry,” she whispers. “And thank you -- you might not appreciate this, but you just saved my life.”

It is deeply meant, with a respect for the thing that goes all the way to the marrow of her bones. With a practiced pinch at the neck and a tug at the base of the tail, it goes slack without a sound. _Not so bad, see?_ Says her father in her memory. _Certainly a better death than it would get out there, at the hands of a silver-eyed fox, or a soulfang._

Claudia tastes the dusty, metallic brush with the Moon Primal as the mouse’s heart and eyes are sublimated. With a whispered word, she disappears. It isn’t perfect -- not a _true_ invisibility at all, really, but rather a repelling of attention. It gets her across the open area unmolested, and she ducks around a shadowed curve at the spire’s base, very close to where her father has fallen. 

The dregs of the magic coursing through her veil the entrance to the cave. Normally there’d never be enough lingering for a second spell of this size, but the staff amplifies every little thing, it gives her so much more to work with. 

She remembers the rest of that conversation, the day she learned to kill a mouse. 

She remembers the way she snickered behind her hands and then collapsed into giggles, revealing (between gasps for air) the thought that had cracked her up: _a soulfang... would look so stupid... with hands!!_

And she remembers dad’s eyebrows practically in his hairline, and then he must have _pictured_ it, because he burst forth laughing too.

Her mouth twitches. When she draws breath, it comes out in a cough, and then a punchy sob that she tries and fails to choke as the memory nudges open the door she was so desperately holding closed. Things start to spill through the crack. Fear. Anger. Grief. Loss. 

The dam threatens to break completely.

She stands achingly still against the stone wall, certain that if she moves an inch, she _will_ vomit. 

Inhale, swallow. Exhale, swallow. 

Inhale. 

All her muscles seem to tense from the core outward, and she can’t stop it. Her body takes over. She’s bent over, hugging herself, but she isn’t throwing up (not that there’s anything in her stomach at this point anyway) she’s just _crying_ in this bizarre, heaving kind of way, helpless to do anything but try to stay on her feet and ride it out as quietly as she can. 

As with all things, the spasm does come to an end. 

What’s next?

 _Get up,_ she commands herself. 

Get **_up._ **

If they find him, they’ll take him, whatever’s left of him, and… _no._ No. Absolutely _not._

For one thing, _Opeli_ would have to oversee whatever happened after that, and Claudia would rather let her father’s body be consumed by the crows than allow that woman to lay a finger on it.

For another, with the staff, _there’s still a chance,_ if she does everything right. 

There’s still work to do. She promises herself that a time to rest will come, but her nails in her palm deliver a stern reminder that it is not now, not yet. Deep breath. 

The space outside the cave mouth is quiet, damp and cool in the shade, the air prickles at her skin. One step, then another, she creeps around the blind curve that separates her from…

From whatever she’s about to find.

It isn’t actually quite as bad as she’d feared.

Once, when she was a young child, Claudia and her brother played a game of their own devising in which they shared the role of hero, dubbing a huge ornamental pumpkin as the villain of the story. At their moment of victory over the brute, seized by the spirit of mischief and imagination that possesses all children from time to time, they rolled it right out a tower window. 

This _isn’t_ like that, much to Claudia’s great relief. 

It isn’t pretty, but it isn’t _that,_ and the contrast between what she’d been imagining and the reality makes it almost tolerable.

His legs seem to have taken the worst damage by far, crossed and wild, every joint bent all wrong like a broken doll. Blood pools in dark splotches beneath stretches where the skin is intact, but much of it is rent by jagged fragments of bone. 

She tries not to look below chest level too much, keeping her eyes on his face: pale, marked by magic, bruised and scraped, but in surprisingly decent shape, considering. That said, she winces considering what likely awaits when she moves his head off the mossy rock beneath it.

Not a step away is the broken, spattered crown, so grossly on-the-nose in its presentation that, were it described in one of her novels, she might have rolled her eyes at the imagery.

The oddest thing is the creature -- the vibrantly-purple thing, neither bug nor serpent now, but some combination of both. Its narrow stare and barbed head has gone from unusual and cute to frankly unnerving -- and it’s pretty banged up as well (she’s assuming that silvery stuff is blood) but clearly alive, curled protectively over her father’s torso. 

“I know you can talk, or listen, or something, so here’s how it’s gonna go,” she says to it, voice half-lost, scraping and dry, presenting confidence that comes only from being too tired to be properly afraid. Without taking her eyes off it, Claudia bends down and picks up a rock bigger than her fist and assumes a stance she might use to throw, or bludgeon. “If you can understand me, I’m telling you to get off him. If you can’t understand me, I’ll just try another way -- one I don’t think you’ll like.”

For a long moment, neither of them move, or even breathe. She watches its focus shift from her face, to the rock in her hand, and back, and holds her ground. Finally, just when the muscles in her arm begin gearing up to strike, its weird little legs finally shift it backwards in a hitching, slithering motion.

She considers throwing the rock anyway, but lets it go instead with a soft _thump._

When she gets close enough, she closes her eyes and holds her breath, hooking her arms beneath his armpits and thinking of things she could be dragging that aren’t her dad’s dead body. 

“It’s a bag of grain,” she mutters to herself. It’s heavy and unwieldy and she feels something stick and pull and bump as she pulls the body through the dirt and grass toward her hiding place. “It’s a hunted unicorn. It’s... a fallen tree.”

One step backward, then the next, each one bringing her closer to safety. 

“It’s a duffel bag. It’s a rolled up... tapestry,” she says under her breath, looking back over her shoulder (and not down at the body) as she crosses into the shadow of the cave. She leaves him for just a moment, to go back for the crown and the staff. When she does, the creature is nowhere to be seen.

With careful hands and frequent breaks, she arranges the body into an almost sleep-like shape. 

“This is gonna be hard,” she mutters to herself, examining her work in the last of the fading light. “It’s gonna be… -- _hooo--_ reeeally hard. But…”

 _But I can do this._

All at once, done the first stage of the work and in relative safety, the last of the exhaustion seem to catch up with her. Against the opposite cave wall, she curls around the eclipse staff to protect it, and falls into a dreamless sleep. 

* * *

On his knees, Soren shuffles out of the expansive stone chamber provided to his chunk of the human contingent (and a couple of elves besides.) It opens directly onto a landing of the staircase that rings the spire, and he sits on the stairs, close to where they drop off into an abyss, the ground obscured by clouds. The moon casts a yellow eye on him, the glow like that of a festival lantern. It’s another world, up here. 

Everyone else is happy, or close enough. Ezran’s chatting away with the animals like a character from one of Claudia’s novels. Callum takes to this place like it’s where he’s always belonged. His new girlfriend (still weird to think about) is wickedly tough in a way that makes him think of wild things that hide their pain -- if she were unhappy, he probably wouldn’t know it. Most of the other humans are walking around in awe, acting like the spire and everything in it are the most beautiful, amazing things they’ve ever seen. 

It’s alright, he supposes. He knows he’s not the smartest guy, but he’s got enough etiquette training not to say out loud that he doesn’t _care_ about the architecture and the glowing engravings and all that. Claudia would probably love it, which hurts. Thanks to Callum he can breathe -- always a plus -- and for sure he’s slept in worse places, but…

He wants to go home. That’s the problem. He wants to go home, and he can’t, he can’t _ever_ go home, because home is… is gone. The rooms are there, the furniture, the halls, but the _home_ he’s always known, the life, might as well be a pile of rubble. 

It’s a kind of self-torture, when he closes his eyes and pictures Claudia’s room left cold and dark. That, of course, leads him right back to Claudia’s _face_ when she realized what Soren was willing to do. He wills himself to stop thinking about it, as he’s done ten times in the last hour, but his brain doesn’t listen.

How is it possible to fight and win a brutal battle one minute and feel like a weepy child the moment it’s done?

_C’mon, asshole. You won. Cheer up._

It doesn’t help. 

A shadow in his peripheral vision makes him turn his head, and when he sees who it is, he straightens his back and puts on his best _good soldier_ face. 

“General Amaya,” he greets politely, thoughtful to face her, even though Gren’s here, her shadow as always. 

“You don’t have to call me that,” she answers, through Gren’s mouth. “We’re almost like family, after all.”

It’s kind of her to say, but he doesn’t agree on either count, any more than if one of the great knights of Elarion had come down from the sky and said it. He doesn’t deserve that honor.

He’s admired her heroism almost as long as he can remember, and every time her people would rotate back home from the border, he’d ask them to teach him one or two signs. He has no aptitude for it, but he _can_ spell his own name, and the word _General,_ with its reach for the shoulder as though touching an epaulet, is an easy one to remember.

“When do you think the dragon queen will get back?” Soren asks. They’d told her the whole story, as honest and detailed as they could. She said she had to consider things in detail, with the aid of other elders, and that she would return as soon as she could. From start to finish, her face was reflective of nothing at all, at least not that Soren could make out. What do dragon facial expressions even look like?

And what does “as soon as I can” mean to a dragon?

“I talked to Corvus and Opeli and Ezran, and Gren of course,” Amaya says, and Gren blushes mildly when he’s forced to say his own name in even the most indirect compliment. “We all agreed to wait three days and then start back if she hasn’t returned. I’d _love_ the opinion of the crownguard as well, of course.”

“Um,” Soren hesitates. What use does his opinion have here? She doesn’t need to ask just to make him feel important, but it seems rude to say so, so he settles on, “Yeah. Sounds good.”

“Are you... alright?” Amaya asks.

“Yep,” Soren lies badly. “Yep, totally fine. All…” 

Amaya interrupts him with little more than her expression, a tilt of her chin and a raise of her eyebrows -- he’s caught. When he shuts up, she says, “It’s alright, to not be fine.”

He wants to rest his face in his hands, but then she wouldn’t be able to read his lips, so his anxious body settles for a curl in his spine and his shoulders coming up around his ears. “Are you sure? Because it doesn’t _seem_ alright. We fought, and we won. If I feel bad, I don’t know, doesn’t that mean…”

“What?” Amaya signs with a jesting smirk, “That you’re somehow aligned with Viren, deep down? Is that what you’re scared of? Being… tainted, or something?”

“I…” Of course she would just say it like that, like she ripped the words right out of his own throat, the words he hadn’t even said to himself. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, if the good guys won, and I’m… a good guy… then how come I feel so lousy?”

“No one likes to fight,” Amaya muses, looking over his shoulder and out into the sky before refocusing on him. “It’s scary, it’s… sweaty… it’s tiring, it means making a lot of hard choices, really fast, and some of the choices you’ve had to make lately… just the fact you had to make them at all... sucks. If you were actually fine, _that_ would be weird.”

“You don’t think I’m secretly a villain too?” Soren asks.

At this, Amaya actually frowns. “I don’t think it’s as simple as deciding someone’s a villain. Soren, your dad was…” She stops, sighs some hair out of her face, and seems to take a moment to think about her words before saying, “Complicated. He was powerful, maybe the strongest human mage I’ve ever met, and definitely the most resourceful. I never trusted him not because he was evil, he wasn’t, but because having him around always felt like… keeping a lion in your house.”

“I… what?”

“You know you know you’re safe against anything that tries to hurt you, ‘cause not much can stand up to that lion. Food runs out, that lion can hunt way better than you. As long as it wants what you want, you’ve got a powerful ally, but if it gets in a mood one day--”

“I… think I get it,” Soren says. 

“I’ve always been more of a dog person,” Amaya says wryly. 

“I guess King Harrow and my mom must have been… good lion tamers,” Soren concludes out loud.

Amaya laughs, voiceless but no less mirthful for it. “Something like that, maybe,” she says, though he can tell she’s holding something back. “Anyway, even if your feelings _could_ be bad, it’s not your _feelings_ that make you a good or bad person. You know that, right? It’s what you _do_ about them… and everyone here knows you’re doing your best. That’s all any of us can do.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, finally starting to believe it. “Yeah. Thanks, General Amaya,” Soren says. He does _try_ to drop the title, but finds himself still unable.

“No matter what the trouble is, you’ll feel better if you can get some sleep,” she advises. “Get some rest -- that’s an order.”

* * *

There is no way for Claudia to know how long it’s been, until she ventures carefully out to the edge of the cave, one tentative step at a time, listening intently for any sign of potential captors. The first fingers of pale light are stretching across the sky, and a thin mist rolls lazily across the gentle slope of the ground and coats the sparse grass in dew.

Under other circumstances, she’d call it beautiful. 

Eclipse staff clutched in one hand (ready to dip into a hip pouch of components and cast and run if needbe) Claudia follows her own footsteps back to the battlefield-that-was. Even in the light fog, she can tell there’s still no shortage of bodies, and as she gets closer to where they’ve fallen in clusters, one truth becomes clear: the fireproof spell is broken. 

Every human she passes has been restored to an ordinary visage, which casts a sharper shadow even than before on the choices of Duren, a nation she used to think of as a friend of her own. 

Used to.

Her own father had reached into his heart, scorched his own blood to save them from ruin and death -- she’d been too young to understand at the time but she sure as hell understands it now -- and _this_ is how they repaid him. Anger simmers up from inside and it is a relief, a kind of fuel on which she can draw to press on. 

Have the living all gone already? 

If she called out right now, would anyone hear?

Thinking about it silences her, such that she couldn’t speak even if she wanted to. She’s sure that if she tried to scream, nothing would come out. 

Someone will be back -- dragons and/or elves, most likely -- so whatever she’s going to take, she needs to take it now. With the butt of the staff, she prods ambiguous figures in the cheek or the brow, and watches warily for signs of a twitch, or for telltale rigidity. By the time the sky begins to lighten in earnest, her bag is heavy with water-skins, dried fruits, jerky, biscuits, and several flasks of clarh, a harsh alcohol she knew as a part of spell component preparation before she ever realized that adults _drink_ it. 

She has to make a second trip for components and clothes, and spends too much time on the former. With the sunrise looming, there’s no time to be choosy on the latter -- she winds up with a bunch of mismatched pieces, prioritizing condition over sizing.

Claudia imagines her father changing into the stolen garments and complaining about the fit, and tears prick at her eyes. It’s the kind of problem she’s hoping she gets to have.

For all her fears, the sky doesn’t fill with dragons the instant the sun comes up. They do come and go, passing to and from the spire high above, but they show little interest in the bottom of the mountain and the morning is largely quiet. She sits inside her cave and takes inventory of spell components and supplies -- what she has now, and what she has access to, if she needs it.

She’s got almost everything. 

Almost. 

Going back out for the last part is risky, but waiting until nightfall will only make it harder, both to find and to use. This time, she leaves the bag and staff behind, bringing only a pouch and some of the stolen clarh and nothing more.

The uniform of Katolis isn’t trustworthy anymore, so she restricts her search to the nations who’d joined them. The sun is high overhead when Claudia hears a soft groan, and finds what she’s looking for at last. 

She closes her eyes and imagines that she is someone else completely before she kneels next to the man. 

“Oh my gosh,” she says, surprising herself with how genuine she sounds. She’s never been a very good liar. “You’re alive!”

The man in the Evenerean armor only groans again in reply. 

“Here, let me help you -- for the pain,” she assures, tipping the flask to his lips. 

He gratefully swallows it down, not even flinching when she pulls a powder from her pouch and sprinkles it over him. His blue eyes fall shut for a moment. When he moves to take the flask from her hand, she gives it up willingly.

The spell that flows past her lips isn’t any true kind of healing. It might as well be a magical version of the drink, just something to ease the pain and slow his mind. It’s enough to get him on his feet, with help. 

“Pleasure to meet _you,_ and no mistake,” he says, his voice heavily accented and scratchy with disuse. He glances out across the field. “They... believe me dead? I am last? Or… there are others?” He remembers his manners, and says, “I am Nin.”

“Um,” Claudia hedges. He’s putting a lot of weight on her shoulders as she helps him limp toward the cave. “Maybe? Anyway, there are dragons around, so… we shouldn’t talk too much. Just... focus on walking.”

The effects of the spell and the alcohol are more than just additive, as it turns out. He gets loopier and more relaxed than expected, which is useful information, in addition to being probably for the best. She helps him deep into the cave, just past where her father rests -- he only glances passively over, and his face is unreadable. If he’s alarmed at all, he certainly doesn’t show it. 

“Alright, sit here, just rest,” she instructs, helping him down to lean against a big rock. 

The light is low this far inside, but it’s enough to work by. Her back is to him as she prepares and arranges the other components, but her ears are alert to any movement. There isn’t any. He’s happy as a clam, it seems. She turns to check on him, and he’s got his head against the rock and his eyes closed.

A whisper of incantation, and the first part of the spell comes together, neat as a pin. She’s never done this before, only read about it, and a swell of satisfaction rises in her heart when it goes as planned. There are many stages to this process, stretching over a span of three days, but this part and the next are by far the most difficult. If she can just do this, then the rest is much simpler, easy spells, with the only caveat being the careful timing required. She won’t get much sleep until it’s done, but that’s an easy price to pay.

“What was it like?” Claudia asks, not turning away from her work. “When you were… when you…”

“Fireproof? I was afraid at first, but it was good. Calm. I felt… focus. No pain, no fear. Lord Viren… he went into danger to give us this, yes? In the elf city?” Nin laughs wetly. “This was the rumor.”

“Hmm,” Claudia hums distantly, only half-listening.

“You are good at magic? Healing?” He sounds like he’s inches from falling asleep. “Gootniss, I am lucky. You are like a… an angel.”

“No,” Claudia says, staff in hand and eyes aglow, her voice like a lead ball dropping to the bottom of the sea. “I’m not.”

It is the last thing he ever hears. 

Like the mouse, he goes quietly, without complaint.

* * *

Three days later, in a cold, dark cabin in the far reaches of the Del Bar mountains, unseen by any human eye, a black candle comes to life with a violet flame. 

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I commissioned the incredible [Joleanart](https://twitter.com/joleanart) for art of Viren and Sigrin, [and here it is](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYiabOGUEAAwscC?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)


	2. Book Four: Earth | Chapter Two: Geosmin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I can hear your whisper and distant mutter. I can smell your damp on the breeze and in the sky I see the halo of your violence. Storm, I know you are coming.”_   
>  **― Robert Fanney**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turned out chattier than I expected, I hope enjoyably so. As always if there was something you enjoyed (or if you just want to happy keysmash at me) comments are hugely motivational.

**Book Four: Earth**

**Chapter 2: Geosmin**

The moon admires her own gauzy reflection in her favorite mirror in all the world: a curve here, a beauty mark there. The lake is still and peaceful, save for the occasional ruffle of wind that spills over the edge of the caldera. To the eye, there would be no hint of the power beneath the surface. 

Sol Regem doesn’t have that problem.

Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t come _near_ this place, and he particularly wouldn’t be abroad at night, at his weakest. Even the short trip across the border to the Moon Nexus has left him exhausted. The stench of death rolling off the human kingdoms (such as they are) permeates the cloud layer here, complicating navigation. Anger clenches at the spark-cord deep in his belly, but without the sun in the sky, it is harder to rouse a flame. This might be for the best, given the apparent sentiment of the queen at the moment.

Fortunately, he doesn’t have to depend on smell alone to find his way. The closer he gets to the nexus, the stronger the vibrations of primal energy become, a song and a compass all at once.

This is the worst of it: the dive into the water. To say it calls on bad memories is an understatement. He draws a deep lungful of damp night air when he is directly above (the smell is weakest, the vibration strongest) and, after eclipsing the moon for a moment, aims himself at the surface. He pierces through and, when his momentum stops, he beats slowly at the water with his wings and tail. 

At the bottom, he breaks through the membrane and exhales, smoke and steam hissing through his nostrils. In the cold, clean space below the lower surface, he can breathe easily, but he loses heat quickly. 

It was always going to be an uncomfortable night. 

Before him, Luna Tenebris rests. He identifies her the way he identifies everyone, by scent, by frequency.

He extends a tendril of primal energy. Even in this state, a draconic link should be possible -- they’ve made one many times before, the path well worn. As expected, on a level somewhere beyond the physical plane, her hook latches together with his. 

_Luna Tenebris,_ he calls along the link, **_w_ _ake._**

At first, she does not stir. He calls her name twice more. With every cycle she has been dormant, she has sunk deeper into this frozen state, but he can feel her energy shifting, stirring, waking, returning to the familiar shape of the body that lies coiled in the cavern.

Sol Regem came here once, before he lost his sight. He remembers the white ripple of the walls, the way Luna Tenebris’ pale shape and silver eye seemed to have grown out of the stone itself. They were both much younger, then. 

A sound: she shifts. 

_For what do you wake me?_ Her tail shudders, and then thumps, and her wings rustle as they roll at the shoulders before stretching experimentally. She is remembering how to be.

 _The world is changing,_ he prefaces, before he sends the details across the link: emotions, events, truths of the time that has passed her. It is a slow drip at first, as the inner aperture opens, peaking at a waterfall of sensory transmission. All of this to precede what he says at the end: _And now,_ _Queen Zubeia has attempted to hold archcouncil without you -- without any of the dormant._

Anger, blunted by shock, sparks back across the cord that links them. _She_ **_cannot._ **And then, a faint echo of gratitude that Sol Regem remained awake, so that he could prevent this travesty. 

_She seems to have forgotten this,_ Sol Regem comments. There are many things that Queen Zubeia has right to, but to exclude the dormant from something of this magnitude is not among them.

 _Then let us remind her,_ agrees Luna Tenebris.

The surface of the Moon Nexus is disturbed once more as not one but two dragons surge up through the water and into the sky. 

By morning, the other dormant archdragons will be awake as well, stretching leathery wings in the sun like newborn butterflies, soaring over the continent and learning what they have missed. They will murmur about whether the queen is incompetent, or the victim of human manipulations. Whisper by whisper, they consider what they might do to protect the world if it turns out to be the case.

They are archdragons, and they will be prepared for whatever they find.

If Queen Zubeia desires an archcouncil, let her have one.

* * *

**  
**Janai’s winged mount shuttles up and down the spire on the afternoon the following day, clearly not happy to be doing it but reluctantly willing to obey orders. Everyone in decent enough condition assists the Sunfire elves who have hung back to perform a ritual for the dead.

Soren is tired, having slept poorly, but he listens carefully to her explanation: the bodies of Sunfire elves, she says, burst into flame by themselves as soon as the flesh begins to break down in earnest, usually within a day or two of death. While there are elaborate procedures for at home, soldiers on the battlefield get a simpler version, engineered primarily to prevent flames from spreading (or, occasionally, to encourage it.)

Grim though it is, it’s still better than doing nothing at all, and his part in it involves a lot more moving of dirt and rocks than of actual bodies, for which Soren is thankful. 

Whenever a body catches fire while they work, the elves briefly stop and all say something Soren doesn’t understand. The next time he happens to be close to Janai, he girds himself and asks her what it means. 

“What comes after death,” Janai explains, “is a dangerous journey, full of tricks and traps and monsters of the world beyond this one. If the spirit does not fail, what lies at the end is oneness with the primal itself. What we say… it is something like… _may you safely return to the sun._ When it is said, the spirit gains power to face the obstacles ahead.”

The next time one catches, Soren stops and says it with them, his mouth tripping over the difficult pronunciation, unsure if he remembered it correctly and hoping the intention is what counts.

He carries stones to the fire-barrier on the downwind side of the field and wonders: if humans aren’t born connected to a primal, what do _they_ return to? When he was little, Opeli comforted him about his first brush with death: the passing of a teacher he liked. She told him that what happens after death depends on who the person was in life. (“Annette was kind and good and loved her students, that means that she gets to be happy forever.”)

Soren isn’t sure if he knows who his dad was at all, or ever really did, and the last thing he wants right now is to hear what Opeli thinks on the subject.

The next night, and the one after, he sleeps as well in the spire chamber as he would in his own bed, too exhausted to even dream. 

Every trainer and captain and leader that Soren has ever known, including his own father and all the way up to King Harrow himself, has agreed on the simple fact of hard work as a _balm for the spirit_. 

Soren used to make jokes about that.

Used to, and never will again.

On the third day, the sun is up and so is his mood. No one wakes him at the crack of dawn, and he’s one of the last to rise. (“Looked like you needed the sleep,” Amaya says, and it feels true.) Even the pang when he thinks how nice some of that hot brown morning potion would be seems… manageable, at least. Upsetting, but not overwhelming. 

There’s a sense among the assembled that it’s unlikely Queen Zubeia will be back before sundown. The younger dragons can’t speak the common tongue, but Ezran’s said that some of them are energetic and adventurous, and they're chomping at the bit to get a look at the west for themselves (despite what they’ve heard and seen of humans) and they’re offering to provide transportation back as an excuse to see it.

Is Soren terrified? Of course.

Does he feel guilty that he tried to kill one of them and now they’re doing him a favor? Pretty much. 

But is he also hyped-beyond-imagining that he’s going to _ride a freaking dragon,_ which is way, way cooler than killing one no matter how he thinks about it? Ab. So. Lutely.

He’s gonna ride a freaking dragon!

Callum still hasn’t packed his stuff up, so Soren heads up the spire steps to go looking for him, and by extension, Rayla. It’s been practically impossible to keep them indoors, so he’s pretty sure he knows where to find them. 

He’s about to crest the edge of the landing when the sound of Rayla’s voice resolves into actual words. 

“--wouldn’t have been so _weird_ about them if they were just regular coins, would he? I may not be a mage, but I _am_ a moonshadow elf. We have a… a sixth sense for things not being what they look like.”

“I believe you,” Callum admits, though he sounds uncertain.

“I know, why don’t you hold it up to your cubey thingy?”

It’d be awkward to just stand there, so Soren jogs the rest of the way up the steps to find them standing close together, both looking down at a little pouch basketed in Rayla’s hands, the edges rolled back to expose the coins inside.

“What’cha got?” Soren asks, without really thinking.

“Actually,” Callum considers, “maybe you can help. Rayla was saying that when Lord Viren froze her, he made a weird comment about a…. A collection? And somehow it was related to these coins. We found them up here, by the edge--”

“Figurin’ he dropped them when I knocked him over the edge,” Rayla adds, not at all picking up on or copying Callum’s loose attempt at tact.

Callum winces, but goes on: “Did he ever… show them to you, or say anything about coins, anything like that?”

“I just know there’s _somethin’,_ ” Rayla says, an edge in her voice that comes off like a warning not to dismiss her out of hand.

She holds the coin pouch out a little, so he can get a look at it, but doesn’t hand it over, and her stance is guarded, able to yank it back if she wanted to. He’s never been that good with nuance, but even Soren can tell she still doesn’t like him or trust him, which… fair enough, he supposes. 

Hopefully he’ll prove himself eventually.

That same hope makes him want very much to be able to say _yes, I know what these are, I can help you,_ or even just _yep, those are some super-magical coins of some kind_ at least, but they genuinely look completely ordinary. No matter how he tries to think if dad or Claudia ever said anything about magic pocket change, he comes up with nothing. If he’s ever seen them, he certainly can’t recall.

“Sorry,” he says instead, feeling a weight dragging on the light feeling he’d woken up with. “I don’t know.”

Impatience floods Rayla’s voice. “He was _your_ da’. If you don’t know, who will?”

“I don’t know!” Soren repeats, hands going up in quick exasperation, trying not to get defensive and failing miserably against the coil tightening in his chest. “I’m not an expert on this stuff, okay? He didn’t keep me in the loop about it, and Claudia _used_ to, but I… guess I made fun of her gross bugs and things too much, because--”

“Hey,” Callum intercedes gently, speaking as much to Rayla as to Soren. “It’s okay. It’s fine. Lord Viren obviously had a lot of secrets, from _everyone._ I just wanted to ask, just in case. Rayla’s right, the cube should tell us _something_ at least.”

Soren shuts his eyes for a second as he takes a deep, magic-assisted breath. It feels the same as any other breath. It seems wrong somehow. Something with magic should feel different. There’s still a tinge of annoyance on him when he says, “They just look like coins. I’m sure if you think they’re weird, they’re weird. Weird magic coins definitely _sound_ like something dad would do, but they just look like coins to me.”

He’s turning to leave, having almost forgotten why he came up here to start with, to get them packing up to leave, when a colossal shadow passes over the sun. 

The Dragon Queen has returned, and she isn’t alone.

* * *

What _was_ it?

There was something, Viren’s certain of it. Just before he’d woken, not a dream, but _like_ a dream -- one that shatters on contact with reality and leaves behind only the inscrutable void where it had been. 

He remembers the collision, and some of the fall, and then…

 _Something,_ something between life and death and life again. He _saw_ something, or did he hear it? It’s desperately aggravating to think about, the knowledge like a shimmering fish that slips away and vanishes into the current just as he closes his hands around it.

Whatever it was, the one thing of which he can be certain is that it feels _important --_ critically so. If he could just figure out what it was--even just come to grips with a piece of it, a corner--

It’s hard to think with that _sound_ in his head. 

“--Maybe less than that, actually--”

“What?” Viren looks from one side of Claudia’s face to the other and back again, as though the words he missed will be written there.

“This is probably a stupid question,” She prefaces, “but are you feeling... okay? Like, normal? Or...”

He bites his tongue. No, there are several reasons that he is not _feeling okay_ , but he is compelled to some degree of stoicism. She’s grown up so much, a fact especially evident in her handling of the last few weeks, but that doesn’t mean he’s about to let her carry any more of the emotional burden here than absolutely necessary. 

Somewhere between deciding to say _I’m fine_ (in spite of how ridiculous that is) and saying it, however, he instead twists away, leans over a low rock, and (as quietly as he can manage) vomits a congealed black sludge onto the ground.

“Ooh,” Claudia says, the wince audible in her voice, “Yeah. That um, probably might... happen a little. There was blood in… um, everywhere…”

Lovely. By the time he sits up again, she’s holding out a soldier’s water flask, from which he drinks lightly -- just enough to mute the metallic, acid taste. 

“What was it you were saying, before?” He finally asks, a little more bluntly than planned. 

“Right, kind of a um, status report,” She speaks quickly, methodically. “The illusion on the cave probably has a little less than a day on it. If I can find another shinemouse I could extend it, but it might be better to use it on us, instead, to get away. The dragons have been staying at the top of the spire, but I know _some_ of them can see through illusions, so if one _did_ come down here...”

“Better if we aren’t here at the time,” Viren agrees, a little miserable at the thought of travel in his condition.

“Dad…” She looks at him, and then down at the stone below her knees, with an open, contagious anxiety. “I think I messed up.”

“Claudia?”

“I just--” She swallows, and he realizes she’s suppressing tears just as they start to spill over. What comes next is a tumble of words through sobs: “I-toldthem-everything, I’msorry, I-was just-so I-IneverthoughtitwouldbeSoren--”

“Focus,” he says, not intending to be harsh, but hoping to provide some grounding. “Deep breath.”

She inhales through her nose, and looks up when she forces out, clear as day, “He tried to kill you! I mean, the fake you. It was _Soren._ And I was so _mad,”_ Fist clenched, she starts to speed up and stumble over her words again, “I told him the whole plan, and I think he or Ezran got a signal somehow, to the other--”

“No, no no no, not--It’s not your fault,” Viren rushes. He extends the arm that isn’t supporting his weight, and at the slightest invitation, she throws herself into a hug.

She sniffles into his ear, her voice tiny when she says, “It’s not?”

“No, you did everything right, I’m sure. It was…” He sighs. _As usual._ “Mine.”

“What happened?” Claudia pulls away, sits back on her heels. Her eyes are rimmed with pink, but she’s already in control again. 

He tries not to polish the truth too much when he tells her about the elf girl, and how he let her live -- whether it was mercy or simply to save time, he’s no longer sure, but it’s the only thing that might have changed the outcome, in the end. The truth is that he hasn’t the faintest idea how she got free of the ice (something other Moonshadow elves had shown no ability to do) and that alone is somehow just as embarrassing as the _overall_ failure.

As he recalls the moment through the haze of his discomfort, his hand reflexively goes to the coin pouch.

Or rather, it goes to where the coin pouch should have been, if he still had it. 

Damn.

The soft, distant sound (not _in_ his ears, but deeper in his mind) oscillates. It isn’t unpleasant, but it is a little distracting. It occurs to him to wonder if it’s related to the cocoon, related to Aaravos, and if Claudia can hear it or if it’s just him. 

“By the way, that elf?” A dark, almost feral edge falls on Claudia’s tone, teenage sarcasm laced with something harsher and more poisonous. “She’s... _fine,_ because _of course she is._ You’ll never guess who saved _her._ ”

“Worry about her later,” Viren advises, from experience. He asks, because he has to know: “Claudia, do you hear a _humming_ sound?”

She sits up suddenly, eyes wide. “You hear it too!? I’ve heard it since we got to Xadia, but Soren didn’t hear anything, so I thought it was just me.”

When did it start for Viren? Just now? Or was he hearing it before and ignoring it? Suddenly it’s unclear. 

“It’s weird,” she says, “And, if I look south, it's like… the feeling I’d get when I was little and I was waiting for cookies to cool, and then someone would call my name and I knew that meant they were ready. Did you get a feeling like that?”

He definitely didn’t, and he shakes his head. “No, but I was admittedly distracted.”

“Anyway, we have to decide what to do with that… thing.” She gestures to the pupa, huge and glowing with a pulsing light. Her arms fold protectively when she looks at it. “I don’t suppose it told _you_ what it’s turning into?”

“He--it--didn’t _speak_ to you, did it?” 

“No. I mean, I _tried._ I think it understood me, but it never--wait, why? Dad, you gotta--” She sighs again, jaw clenched for a moment. What comes next is deliberate, rehearsed. “Okay. I’m not going to tell you that I’m _ready for this,_ or that I’m _strong enough,_ or whatever. I’m scared, really scared, but I don’t think I… _we…_ have a choice. We’re all we have now, so you can’t just try to protect me, no matter how bad it is. Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it, we’ll do what has to be done, the way you always taught me, but you have to let me in. You have to tell me the truth.”

When she’s done speaking, she freezes, eyes fixed on the cave floor, braced for whatever reaction she’ll get.

The whole thing is so far off the edge of the map, so reversed from the way it should be, he actually laughs despite himself.

Her focus darts up, looking at him he’s lost it. He brushes one hand against her cheek and says, “You are _more than_ strong enough, Claudia, never doubt that, but that doesn’t matter. You could have the power of the entire cosmos and I would still hope to protect you.”

“Dad--”

“But you’re right,” he presses on, tone falling into seriousness. 

“I am?” She must have expected a longer debate.

“You’re right that you need the truth, and you’re right that I was trying to keep you safe by hiding it. _Everything_ involving that creature was --is-- an _insane_ risk. I knew that from the start.” Viren casts about for the right words. He regards the cocoon. “I may as well have tried to put a bridle and reins on a comet.”

Claudia’s eyes darken. “It’s related to that mirror, isn’t it?” And then, in answer to Viren’s shocked expression, “I’m not _stupid._ It was in your office for months, it was this big mystery, and then suddenly it was gone and we didn’t talk about it anymore. What _else_ am I supposed to think?

He’s as alarmed as he is proud, the moment of casual genius giving him confidence that she truly _can_ handle the rest.

“Alright,” Viren says. “Let me explain.”

* * *

To Soren, the plan sounds… good. Unexpected, hard to wrap his head around, but he’s come around to Callum’s conclusion that almost anything has to be better than more war. He’s fought before, and been ready to fight, in his capacity as crownguard, but the battle at the spire was _nothing_ like that. It was messy, chaotic, and terrible in a way he could never have really expected. 

He glances sidelong at General Amaya, who’s watching Gren’s interpretation with interest, tinged along the edges with unspoken concerns. She interrupts Gren to ask a question -- that much is clear, but none of the signs are familiar. Gren shrugs and does a sign Soren _does_ recognize from sheer repetition alone: “I don’t know.”

Janai is watching them too, with unguarded, helpless fascination reserved more for Amaya than for the queen’s speech. 

Soren turns to gauge Ezran’s reaction. 

On the second day, before Queen Aanya left the spire to return home on the back of a cooperative, sympathetic dragon, there was a discussion about Ezran’s kingship. Whether he would choose a regent was left up in the air, but one thing is clear: Ezran is king once again, with the endorsement of everyone present and the promise of Duren’s faithful support. 

Silently, Soren was just desperately relieved that no one even moved to consider his father’s time with the crown to be considered valid. Just _imagining_ that kind of responsibility makes him just about break out in hives. 

In Claudia’s novels, there are often characters who are special somehow, because royal blood in those worlds is a kind of magic all its own that sets people apart. Aanya’s composure, and Ezran’s focus and patience, make Soren wonder if there isn’t a grain of truth to that.

He turns his attention back on the speech, having missed a little lost in his own head. So far, Queen Zubeia has painted a picture of a world where elves and humans can live in harmony. No more fighting, that’s the selling point.

Peace.

Dad had said they were on the brink of changing times, but there was no way to guess that it would change this way, that Soren would live in a time where dragons would promise to use their immense power to _help_ humanity, where the troops at the border could go home to their families, where elves could visit human lands not for terrorism and assassinations, but in the spirit of goodwill.

It seems like a dream, but here it is: proof that they did the right thing. 

There are concessions, of course. The Council of Archdragons, Zubeia says, is concerned about human prejudice and violence, dark magic, and they fear rebellion against the new way by those who do not understand. They have plans to prevent these things from becoming troublesome, which she points out will also serve to stabilize Ezran’s position if he agrees to the terms.

“What kind of plan?” Ezran asks, back straight, shoulders squared.

When she reveals the solution, Soren chokes on his own spit, and he’s not the only one. For a moment, he’s worried that the suggestion of a dragon regent would be a bridge too far, and the whole thing might fall apart. After the initial shock, though, no one actually shouts it down right away. That has to be a good sign, right?

The Council of Archdragons (a thing Soren did not know existed until today) has apparently chosen a candidate: Scyntyllah, the elder sister of the first dragon Soren met. 

“It was decided,” Scyntyllah says, as softly as a creature that size can probably manage, “that a dragon with the power of speech should be chosen, to prevent misunderstandings like what happened with my sister. I have long guided and supported Lux Aurea, and with its passing resemblance to the structure of a human kingdom, that was considered useful experience.”

“Excuse me, Your Royal Highness,” Opeli steps forward, her voice like a knife through the proceedings. Four enormous dragon eyeballs -- those of Queen Zubeia and the newly-introduced Scyntyllah -- refocus on her. “I cannot tell you how honored I am to be here, speaking with you. It is my greatest pleasure to witness this historic moment. However, I am… troubled. May I speak freely?”

“You may,” Queen Zubeia permits. The flattery seems to have been effective, though it’s still difficult to be sure about the facial expressions.

“The prospect of peace is such a beautiful one,” Opeli says. Behind her, expressions are clearer: Corvus’ interest, Amaya’s skepticism, Gren’s focus, Janai’s suspicion, Callum’s hope. (Rayla is politely unreadable.) “But I am certain that I am not alone in my worry about a human kingdom being ruled by one who is not… well… human. We are all more than eager to work together, but this seems like it may not be... well-received. The needs of humans and dragons --and elves-- are naturally quite different”

Reluctant, sheepish nods ripple through almost everyone. 

“I understand,” Zubeia says. “As your prospective regent, I think Scyntyllah should answer for herself.”

Scyntyllah tilts her head up and then down, a slow single nod. “This _is_ a concern that I and the Archcouncil share as well. It is valid. If the offer of peace is accepted, the adjustment will be... quite something. I will need much assistance from high-ranking humans. In particular, the Archcouncil suggested the creation of a new role to help this transition. Indeed I am so pleased that you have stepped forward now -- I am told it was you, dear lady, who detected the malice in Prince Azymondias’ attacker long since.”

“I…” Opeli hesitates, clearly hesitant to brag.

“She did,” Corvus says, from just behind her, nudging her with a grin. “She knew he was treacherous.”

For some reason, Soren wants to disappear. He just tries very hard not to draw attention to himself. 

“Wonderful,” Scyntyllah says, the corners of her eyes wrinkling in a way that seems like she might be pleased. “It is precisely this kind of intuition that I would need at my side, if we do indeed decide to cooperate. Queen Zubeia, what do you think?”

Opeli stiffens as Queen Zubeia stretches her long neck to examine her more closely, and is that a sniff, or just a regular inhale?

After a beat, the queen says, “I think she would make an _ideal_ Minister of Justice. Alas, surely the cruel, evil man who threatened my baby is not the only dark hearted human remaining, and this woman is perfect to help protect the world from others like him.”

They speak the common tongue to one another -- Soren would have expected them to change into… what was it called? Draconic? Though maybe they’re just trying to be polite. It’s confusing, almost hard to follow. He gets the sense they’re pretty confident in their plans going forward.

Opeli seems soothed enough, and no one else has anything they’re willing to voice in the moment. 

Ultimately, it’s down to Ezran to decide whether to accept or decline the offer of the dragons. He’s the only one with the authority, but also, he seems to understand the dragons better than anyone else, and he’s the one who’ll have to live with one as his regent if he says yes.

Ezran looks to Opeli, who smiles, and that must be enough to push him off the fence. It is a moment that Soren imagines illustrated in a history book (and he wonders if he’ll be drawn in the picture) as the King of Katolis accepts terms of peace from the Queen of the Dragons. 

In light of this, they stay one more night -- both for some questions to be answered and details negotiated, and, more importantly, for the celebration that starts when Janai and Amaya decide to have a toast with something Janai calls _Solar wine._

* * *

“So I’m guessing you don’t want to kill him, then,” Claudia says when Viren’s done, eyeing the pupa with unease. 

Does he? 

It isn’t as if it’s completely out of the question. 

When he took his first steps down this bizarre path, he assumed that Aaravos would happily kill _him_ if the need arose, but by that point the collaboration was _still_ the least worst option. Since then, though, Aaravos has saved his life at least a couple of times, and, despite Viren’s fatalistic suspicion, has not betrayed him at all. 

_Yet,_ says the soft voice of paranoia in his mind. Hasn’t betrayed him _yet._ Who knows what he’d have done if they’d have been successful? 

No way to know now. 

“No,” Viren concludes. “Not… deliberately.”

Claudia’s one eyebrow goes up. “You want to kill him by accident?”

“No! No, that’s not--” Viren pinches the bridge of his nose. “I mean that _whatever_ is inside of that pod, we cannot simply leave it to sit here alone. As you pointed out: elves and dragons will surely find this cave, and there is no good outcome to that. But we can’t stay to guard it until it’s done… whatever it’s doing, either.”

 _“Oh,”_ Claudia catches on. “Because I was just thinking, if he’s as powerful and dangerous as you say, but he’s _helpless_ right now… imagine bottling _that_. I mean it’s still no dragon, but--”

“No, I do feel I owe him at least a chance,” Viren admits. A little smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, though. _This is what you get,_ he thinks, _for calling her an asset. If I had stayed dead she would have destroyed and consumed you. Asset indeed._ “And if he is truly an ally, he’s worth more to us and the world alive.”

“Gotta say, sounds like you’re suggesting we cut that thing open and see what flops out.” Claudia rests a finger against her chin. “... _Is_ that what you’re suggesting?”

She asked for honesty, after all. “What else can we do? We have to move on, and we can’t leave that thing behind. If it kills him, or his conduit, it’s still better than letting either one fall into enemy hands.”

He uses the pyramidal stone behind him to struggle to his feet, politely ignoring Claudia’s silent offer of a hand. Once steady, he moves closer to the cocoon. On closer inspection, he can see a humanoid head and horns, and if he isn’t entirely mistaken, the shadowy shape inside resembles a person, curled up, knees to chest. 

Even the tiny fraction of Aaravos’ power that Viren felt in those few moments was _literally_ intoxicating, completely overwhelming. If this is Aaravos’ way out of his prison, and he survives being sliced free, Viren knows that he could be setting loose on the world something not unlike a god, or a force of nature.

On the other hand, that _force of nature_ most likely still has the same enemies that Viren does. 

_May as well have tried to put a bridle and reins on a comet --_ his own statement from earlier comes back to him now. It could wind up being the same comet, without even the pretense of reins. 

The hum inside soothes him, steadies him.

Here he is again, floating above his body, watching himself make an insane choice, watching himself reach back and ask Claudia for a dagger, telling her to back away once she supplies it. 

The unearthly material of the chrysalis parts before the blade, and a pile of dark sky flesh plops bonelessly to the ground in a pool of slick, silvery-lavender fluid. 

Once it has come to rest, it is still. 

The humming sound, which Viren had imagined might stop (or get worse) when the cocoon was cut, hums on, completely unchanged, and he begins to wonder if the two things are actually not related at all.

“Stay back,” Viren cautions Claudia. Then, frowning, half-contradicting himself: “Is there a... blanket? Or something like that?”

“Uh… there’s my cloak, but… Oh!” An idea hits her: “Horse blanket!” 

“That’ll do,” Viren asserts, watching owlishly over the body as Claudia goes to find the horse blanket closer to the entrance of the cavern.

The slimy, crumpled shape _is_ Aaravos, alright, different from what Viren remembers only in coloring. He tilts his head as he makes the comparison: the trunk is largely the same night-sky indigo, though the purple is more pronounced and saturated, and where the figure in the mirror faded to an almost chambray color toward the extremities, this new flesh lightens sooner, transitions further, to hands and feet -- and ear tips and horns -- of flaming, pinkish-orange.

It doesn’t take too much consideration to realize: where he previously bore the complexion of a sky before dawn takes hold, these are the colors of _dusk._ Accordingly, he isn’t _quite_ devoid of twinkling freckles, but it’s a near thing, with wide expanses of of skin between them, particularly in contrast to the overabundance before.

Viren crouches by Aaravos’ head and, in an odd movement that recalls days parenting much younger children, wipes some of the fluid from around his mouth and nose with a corner of the fabric he’s wearing. (The long white shift-garment is already in terrible shape, how much worse can it get, really?)

Close up, he can see that the diamond shapes on Aaravos’ cheeks are unchanged, and, more importantly, that while it is very slight, he _is_ breathing. 

“Aaravos,” Viren whispers, and then, a little louder, a voiced hiss: _“Aaravos, are you in there?”_

Just in time to unnerve Claudia (having retrieved the blanket) the body begins to tremble in a completely inhuman manner -- less like a living being at all, and more like a teapot without a vent threatening to explode. It only does this for the space of a breath or two, but it feels like it goes on forever before tension rushes properly into the muscles. 

There is a series of odd, small movements, like a puppeteer testing the joints of a marionette, and then a deep, damp inhale and a _growl_ of an exhale.

Viren nods to Claudia, who tosses the blanket across to him, and he drapes it across the tangle of limbs. Beneath it, Aaravos draws himself to hands and knees. With a _pap-papap-pap-_ sound, he taps the cave floor with his fingertips, and then -- _PAP--_ with his whole hand. 

And then he laughs. 

It starts as sort of sub-vocalized murmur, barely audible, a hiss of air through his nose, but quickly grows into a deep, joyful chuckle. His face is covered by a curtain of wet hair, and therefore unreadable. 

_PAP._ He slaps the ground again, this time sliding his hand across the smooth stone, leaving a trail of sparkling fluid behind. _“Hmm, not finished,”_ he whispers.

“Um--” Claudia ventures, anxiously transfixed, seemingly ready to beat a hasty retreat at a moment’s notice. “Is he… _usually_ this weird?”

Viren is not sure how to answer that question.

The sound of it startles Aaravos out of his obsession with the ground. He rocks back to sit on his heels, marveling over the texture of the maroon horse blanket for a moment before wrapping it around his body and snapping his gaze up to Viren’s face. His eyebrows are practically in his hair, eyes wide and dark, mouth stretched to its limit in a wild grin.

“Viren! Alive!” Aaravos throws back his head and laughs again, full of unrestrained glee. He twists, and regards Claudia for a moment, seems as though he wants to say something, and then decides otherwise.

Viren looks over Aaravos’ head, and says to Claudia, “No, this is different than before.”

Aaravos tries to stand, slips on the pool of goo, and falls back to his knees, which triggers another round of ridiculous laughter. He braces his hand on his forehead and laughs until he starts crying. 

* * *

When Soren turned thirteen, the staff started serving him wine at the dinner table. The first time he tried it, his face screwed up as if he’d bitten into a lemon. Since then, it’s grown on him a little, enough that he can sip it politely on formal occasions so he doesn’t get scolded for childishness, but if he has the choice he’ll still take fruit juice every time. 

At least, that was the case until tonight. General Amaya encourages him to try a sip of the “solar wine,” and the only way he can describe it is _best of both worlds._ It’s as sweet as ripe berries, but has this kick to it, like hot peppers, that gets in his nose. 

“Good, right?” Amaya says, her hands moving a little slower as the night wears on.

“I’m sure Lux Aurea will be happy to sell it to you by the barrel,” Janai says, laughing for maybe the first time since Soren met her, an unexpected sound. 

“Just think,” Gren says, eyes practically sparkling, “Once trade really gets started, we’ll probably have a _lot_ of new food to try.”

General Amaya signs something to him that Soren and Janai don’t catch, but it makes Gren laugh. 

“Better than strawberries?” Gren answers, “I don’t know about--” There’s movement on the other side of the room -- Ibis and Callum have come back inside from whatever discussion they were having, the staff and Callum's scarf a flash of light and color. Gren moves his head too quickly. He stumbles. 

Soren reaches to catch him, but a moment too late. He can only watch as Gren tries and fails to catch himself on the nearest object: a squat metal stand supporting one of the cages for the communications crows brought by the invading army. The stand isn’t strong enough, and all Gren manages to do is bring the whole mess down with him. 

The cage falls next to him and the door opens, the frightened, angry crow making a beeline for the exit. 

On the bright side, no major harm is done, Gren is uninjured but for his pride, and everyone has a good laugh about it. 

“Hey, Soren? Gren?” Callum’s voice comes from behind, and Soren turns to find him with a worried look. “Everyone okay?”

“Yep!” Soren asserts, and jibes, “Why not hang with your _human_ buddies? We’re all being clumsy, you’ll fit right in.”

“Ah, actually--” Callum segues, “I wanted to ask you about something… sort of related to that.”

General Amaya demonstrates a remarkable ability to get serious in a hurry as she signs something to Callum, who takes it as encouragement. 

He answers, including the signs he knows, “No, nothing’s _wrong_ exactly. It’s just… do you guys… _hear_ something?”

“What kind of something?” Soren asks. 

“I don’t know, it’s weird. Like a kind of… humming noise, like a beehive _inside_ my head. I’m just trying to see if there’s any pattern other than the _south_ thing.”

“South?” Gren asks, for himself. 

“When I turn to the south,” He demonstrates, spinning in a slow circle and then stopping at what Soren has to trust is south. His eyes get a faraway, zoned-out look. “It feels different. Like… someone’s calling me and I can’t quite hear them.” 

“You feeling alright?” Soren checks. He’s heard of soldiers getting hurt and not realizing it until much later, and hopes nothing like that happened to Callum. “You didn’t hit your head in the fight, did you? Does it… hurt?”

“What? No no no, it’s not bad. Actually it’s kind of nice? I’ve heard it since Rayla and I crossed into Xadia. At first I thought it was just a Xadia thing, but she doesn’t hear it, and then we were too busy to really pay attention to it. I thought it might be a sky primal thing, or a _magic_ thing, so I asked Ibis, but he didn’t understand. I asked the new Queen Regent about it -- she seems nice, by the way -- but she didn’t know what I was talking about. I guess you guys don’t either?”

All of them shrug and shake their heads at about the same time. 

Amaya cautions, “Just be careful, alright? Tell someone if you don't feel good.” 

Callum says, and signs, “I will, promise.”

* * *

Everything is incredible. Unbelievable. _Amazing._ Aaravos has a serious problem, and by all rights he should be furious, but no, he just can’t concentrate long enough to summon the feeling. 

It’s all too delightful: the feel of his hand against the cool stone, the air on his clammy skin, even the blanket, which smells _terrible,_ like horsehair and trail dirt and mildew, is made spectacular simply by the fact that he can smell it at all.

Being able to see and hear the real world through his larva had been quite something, especially at first, but this is a whole other level, it’s overwhelming. 

Aaravos is hardly paying attention when Viren steps around him and confers with his progeny for a moment. It’s hard to speak at all, he’s still getting used to using this mouth. It’s more intuitive than the bug, but more complicated. It feels _heavy_ compared to the one he’s accustomed to, which he realizes is because the muscles aren’t quite there. Besides which, the sheer stimulation is making words all crowd around his head, it’s hard to pick out the right ones.

Viren says something, and Aaravos realizes too late that he isn’t paying attention, he’s coasting on the sound of Viren’s voice -- good before, _so_ much better with proper ears -- and not processing all the words.

“Are you... _sure_ he’s okay?” Asks the girl. What was her name? Clara? Kalia? Whatever it was, she’s delightful. 

Belatedly, his mind catches up to him: it had been something about cleaning, and clothes, all of which sound fine. He forgets for a moment that humans can’t read his mind, nodding when he finally remembers.

Viren’s mouth is a tight line, and his brows form concerned squiggles as he does something odd with his arm. Aaravos stares at the hand in front of his face, and suddenly it clicks that it’s an offer of help, to stand. 

Aaravos takes Viren up on it and a shock goes right up his arm. _Ah, incredible!_ He’d been able to direct the bug, but not actually _feel_ anything through it. Even if it's a little indirect, it's physical contact, the first in _ce_ _nturies._ The soft warmth of it, the spark of palm on palm, he thought he might never feel this again and his eyes flutter shut in a moment of bliss. He hums and rubs the back of Viren’s hand with one slimy thumb, causing Viren to draw his shoulders up around his ears and grimace. 

Behind him, the girl snickers, which causes Viren to shoot a _look_ at her over Aaravos' shoulder. She says, “I’ll just… stay here, as a lookout. Probably best.”

Clutching the smelly blanket about his shoulders, Aaravos lets himself be led through a passageway so narrow he has to let out a breath to pass at one point, and into a damp chamber that smells of minerals.

“Am I dreaming?” Aaravos finds the words to ask, feeling his mind begin to settle. 

“No,” Viren’s voice echoes off the low, almond-like arc of the ceiling. For a moment, Aaravos is confused about where the light is coming from, but he realizes that Viren himself is projecting it from his other palm. “Why, did you dream, in there?”

“I don’t know,” he admits stiffly, shedding the blanket onto the floor and stepping into the water. It’s cold, but in a pleasant, bracing way that helps him to focus. “I wasn’t... _in there,_ exactly. How are _you_ alive?”

Viren hesitates. It must be a point of discomfort for him. “Claudia. She… resurrected me.”

 _“Wonderful,”_ Aaravos says with a loose smile. This family never ceases to impress. (Claudia, _that_ was her name.) “What did I tell you? Excellent offspring. Truly well done.”

“Yes, well, she was seriously considering killing _you,_ so don’t get too excited,” Viren says, chuckling to himself. 

This draws a long, low laugh out of Aaravos as well. He dilutes the cocoon fluid with water and sloughs it off his skin. “Ah, I truly am fortunate. I cannot imagine how dull and irritating it would have been if someone _else_ had found that mirror. Although… I _would_ have liked to _complete_ the process.” He examines his arm, a sort of maudlin nostalgia rising in him for the stars he yet must wait to see there.

“I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but we’re under the _spire_ right now,” Viren says with urgency, bristling. “It’s swarming with sunfire elves and dragons. Would you have preferred to be left for them to find?”

“Ah,” Aaravos says darkly, imagining how that would likely go. Would they simply destroy the vessel and leave him alone in his prison to rot? Or would it be worse than that? “I suppose not.”

“When you say _complete the process--”_

“Escape, yes.” Aaravos kneels and then lays back in the water to rinse the fluid from his hair and his horns, which feels _sublime_ . “Given enough time, that chrysalis could have been a kind of _trapdoor_ out of my prison. Like digging a hole in the wall.”

“How much time is enough?”

Aaravos frowns, working it out in his mind, remembering the way humans count time, and how it relates to the candles in his cell. “A decade.”

Viren actually laughs a little. “Dragons imprisoned you, you can’t possibly imagine you could have been left alone beneath their lair for _ten years._ ”

“Eight,” Aaravos corrects, remembering that humans count in tens. “And it was worth the attempt regardless. This new vessel is still a _vast_ improvement on the... previous situation. Wouldn’t you agree?”

All at once, Viren seems compelled to look anywhere _but_ at Aaravos’ body. He coughs, and then changes the subject: “Out of curiosity, do you hear the humming?”

Aaravos freezes, listens. There is a faint rush of water moving somewhere deeper in the cave system, and nearer, the sound of droplets falling from a stalactite. He shakes his head, splashing water off his hair. 

“Nothing?” Viren asks. 

“Nothing,” Aaravos confirms. “Why, I suppose you do?”

“Yes, and Claudia hears it too -- it sounds like…” Viren struggles to describe it, and as he does, he turns on the spot, and though humans have no internal compass, he pauses a moment at due south. “Well it doesn’t sound _like_ anything. It’s rather unnatural. I would almost say it’s more like _feeling_ than hearing.”

“Have you ruled out inherited madness?” Aaravos jokes, but Viren doesn’t seem to find it amusing. 

Fortunately, some of the clothes that Claudia retrieved from casualties have at least a little give to them, and at least a couple of the garments belonged to someone large enough that Aaravos can fit the black top, clearly meant to sit beneath armor -- though it’s a bit snug -- and the matching pants are loose enough to be comfortable, though they don’t quite make it to his ankles. 

It’ll have to do.

Viren changes too, discarding the white garment he’d been forced into in Lux Aurea and replacing it with a moss-green tunic with wide half-length sleeves.

Both sets of clothes are marked with small singed places from the heat of their wearer’s temporary metamorphosis. 

“What nation wears these, nowadays?” Aaravos wonders out loud.

“I believe I’m dressed as a Del Bar medic. Claudia’s mother would die laughing,” Viren considers with open amusement, and then, after looking at Aaravos, “I’m not sure about you, but I think... Neolandia? That’s the desert, to the north.”

“I _did_ always enjoy the desert.” 

“Good view of the stars,” Viren guesses correctly, making Aaravos feel pleasantly seen. This, too, is a sensation so long lost it was nearly forgotten.

The damp hair is a reminder of the problem he has: this vessel is inert, magically-speaking. Even the larva had been able to serve as a bit of a conduit, but the small amount of energy this one can channel goes almost entirely to maintenance of functions and continued growth -- he does want his stars back, after all.

Unable to go out the backdoor of his prison, he’ll have to pilot this body to the _front._ Not impossible, if he can figure out where it is, and if he has help, but a daunting prospect nevertheless. 

He can’t cure the disease, but he can certainly ameliorate the symptom. From Viren’s discarded robe he rips a strip of cloth about the width of his thumb, like a ribbon to restrain his hair behind him. Like everything else, it will have to suffice for the moment. 

Viren leads the way back, being the only one able to conjure light. 

Upon squeezing once more through the space between the rocks separating the natural corridor from the wider section of cave, they are met with Claudia, holding a dead crow loosely by the neck and shoulders. 

“Look at the bracelet on its leg,” she says, holding out the bird and indicating the red-and-gold ring around its ankle. Her words are saturated with dread. “It flew _right_ in here. If they haven’t found us, they must be closing in, at least. Wherever we’re going, we need to go _now._ ” 


	3. Book Four: Earth | Chapter Three: Continental Drift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I am born here among the monsters; if I am to survive I must act like one of them.”_   
>  **-M.F. Moonzajer**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I hear someone order some rayllum fluff? Because your delivery has arrived. 
> 
> (I used the quote function to indent the speechifying to try and make for easier reading, I hope it had the desired effect.)

**Book Four: Earth**

**Chapter 3: Continental Drift**

Spine straight, shoulders back, knees together, legs slanted, feet touching, hands folded in lap -- Queen Aanya’s gaze stops in the middle distance as she concentrates on her posture rather than the performance. 

The orchestra is the best in Duren, and while there are almost two hundred people filling the ornate White Rotunda Ballroom that soaks up the sunlight beneath the castle’s largest dome, the musicians are here to play specifically for _her._ It seems cruel that she cannot enjoy it. The crown feels like a vise, and every cry of the strings and moan of the woodwinds only turns the handle, tightening its grip. 

Things have devolved significantly since the triumphant moment when she returned to her castle on the back of a dragon. Her headache (which she has concealed from all but her personal physician) started a few days after she returned home from the spire, and while it has waxed and waned since then, it has not fully abated once. 

Every day brings news from advisors, generals, and representatives, all of it worse than the day before. Duren’s status as _breadbasket of the west_ is a double-edged sword: while she has openly considered wielding it to get her allies (possibly former allies, now) in line, it would be inhumane to their citizens, who need food, and her own, who need to sell what they grow. 

Every night brings sense-memories of stringing her bow and loosing her arrows upon the horrific, transformed Prince Kasef. 

Not helping those nightmares is the fact that the soldiers she fought have since returned to human form, both the dead and the living. The citizens of the other four nations don’t _understand,_ they didn’t _see_ them: not humans at all but fearless, coal-eyed golems warped by dark magic.

All they see now are their family members and friends, asserting to anyone who will listen that the temporary state was frightening but far from terrible, that they were not monsters, that they did not deserve to be cut down by their own kind.

Does that matter, in the end? Aanya had gone in there prepared to battle with other humans regardless, if that was what it took. When Opeli came to her, they had a quick, easy understanding: that like amputating a limb to avoid gangrene, sometimes a battle is necessary to avoid greater war. It’s not a popular sentiment, though. She avoids saying it out loud.

_“There are times, my daughter, when a queen must stand before the sword that threatens to pierce the heart of her people -- even when they do not understand it, even if they hate you for it, this duty does not change.”_

Her mother wrote that in a journal that was intended as a gift, meant to be one in a long _series_ of diaries and writings that would be presented to her upon reaching womanhood. Only half of one book was ever written, and her minders gave it to her as soon as she could read. The words comfort her from beyond the world of the living.

She did the right thing. 

Didn’t she?

The one bright spot in it all is Katolis -- restless as she hears the citizenry may be, her new friendship and connection with Ezran and his supporters (and now, it seems, the dragons) is a safe-haven upon which she can depend. 

There is a movement to her right, a flash of a silver badge and chestnut hair as her High Steward, Samira, crouches next to her chair and whispers in her ear. 

Aanya knows Samira too well. If she is interrupting the event, it must be a true emergency, and if she is concealing details, discretion must be called for. Inside her, the dread of whatever awaits competes with the relief of imminently leaving the room.

When Aanya rises to her feet, the orchestra stops mid-measure, and the audience stands.

“Please,” she says, as placatingly as she can manage. “I apologize, be seated and continue. You are all no less deserving of this beautiful music simply because I am absent.”

A beat, a breath, and the conductor obediently starts the players again. As she passes through the sheer white curtains marking the threshold of the rotunda, she can hear the shuffling of two hundred people retaking their seats. 

“What is it?” Aanya asks, but the moment they step out onto the veranda, her question is answered.

Logically, she knows that dragons are no longer necessarily foes, but that does not stop the automatic chill in her blood and flutter in her heart when she sees _five_ of them circling high above the city, dark wings spread against the sky. Despite being higher in altitude, one of them is clearly much bigger than the others. If she assumes the smaller ones are about the size of the young dragon that carried her, that would make the large one enormous -- not to the degree of Queen Zubeia herself, but not far off. 

“Samira?” Aanya asks, hoping for more information. 

“When they arrived, so did an Earthblood elf come to the gate. He was carrying this--” Samira holds a twisted wooden rod with a pale green flag wrapped around it. “He said that when you were ready to meet with the dragon Fosso, someone should wave this flag in the place where you would like him to land. He explained that this willingness to land in a requested place is a ‘signal of peaceful intent.’”

“Can the castle even support him?” Aanya wonders out loud, thinking but not saying that if he wanted to _signal peaceful intent_ , he might consider sending the elf _before_ circling above a castle and scaring everyone. 

It breaks the tension slightly: Samira smiles and says, with a tinge of humor, “Better not to test it now, I think.”

“Alright, have this taken to the lawn at the foot of the castle hill, by the riverbank.” Aanya strategizes.

“Very good, ma’am,” Samira says, and gives the flag and the instructions to the nearest guard to hurry ahead with it. “I believe he is connected to the Earth Primal, like the elf messenger, perhaps he will prefer that anyway.”

By the time Aanya reaches the long pitch of grass, she is flanked not only by Samira but by an entire troop of guards. Still, she gestures that they stop at the edge so that she can approach the dragon on her own -- peace is a work in progress, and it would not do to receive such a guest as though frightened or hostile. 

Her estimation of size was more-or-less correct, and she must crane her neck to look up at the spectacle of him. His scales are a mosaic of amber and emerald, and his horns jut from his skull, splitting off at the base into forked, angular shapes, like collections of quartz.

Two of his retinue sit on their haunches behind him, dwarfed by him, and the other two continue to circle above. Aanya hopes there isn’t any panic in the towns, but she knows that the news of emerging peace hasn’t made it all the way out into the countryside, and even the people who are aware are likely skeptical.

“Queen Aanya,” he rumbles, bending low in a gesture that combines bowing and lying down to get closer so that they can speak. “I am Fosso, contemporary of Scyntyllah, the new Queen Regent of Katolis.”

All at once, Aanya knows _precisely_ where this is heading, and before their meeting is done, she is proven more correct than she could ever have suspected. Everything that comes next is like the weather: there is nothing to do but endure it. 

The way that he speaks, his intention can only be to let Aanya save face -- for as clear as it is that Fosso wants (and will have) control, it is equally clear that he is uninterested in the visuals and trappings of domination. 

He doesn’t want an argument, so he makes it easy to say yes.

At sunset, she stands on the veranda of the lower bailey. Sparse clouds cut the sky so that it bleeds red and pink, and the long banners hanging from her platform flutter against the stone in the same wind that carries her voice. 

Far away, a storm seems to have passed beyond her border without ever touching it. 

“Greetings, people of Duren,” she addresses the gathered crowd. It is comprised mainly of residents from the city around the castle, which is heartening -- those physically closest to the crown are, in the case of her nation at least, also typically the most loyal to it. When they spread her message, they will be kind. 

> “As of late, it has fallen to me alone to reign over our bountiful land. While I have been deeply thankful for the wise counsel of our generals, chancellors, and academics, as you all know, I have taken no new regent, instead bearing the burden of the crown on my own. 
> 
> “Recently, however, I found it necessary to ride into battle myself to ensure that further war would not come to us. Were I to have perished, with no heirs and no regent, our kingdom would suffer the chaos. This has haunted me.
> 
> “The weight of the changing world has led me to reconsider my intention to reign fully independently. My greatest wish is for stability, safety, and peace in our land, so that _all_ of my people may live lives of abundance and confidence. To ensure that this is possible, I have agreed to work with our new allies, represented by the dragons who soar above you now. 
> 
> “They have sworn that as long as we cooperate in return, they will protect us from threats to peace both outside and within our borders. They have promised to use their connection to the Earth Primal to ensure that never again will we have to resort to dark magic and tragic sacrifice to feed our people, no matter how many we may number, and no matter what may occur in the lands beyond ours. 
> 
> “With this agreement, Duren will henceforth have no need to fear elf, nor dragon. We are at peace with Xadia.” 

Those lines are a crowd-pleaser, as expected.

She doesn’t tell them the other side of Fosso’s ultimatum: _Defy us, and we will burn every field that feeds you, break down every wall that protects you, and leave you, Queen Aanya, to rule over a nation of ash and carrion._

Fortunately, the carrot is enough that the stick needs no discussion, and the dragons’ promise of protection and plenty _should_ be more than enough to blunt the sting of what comes next. 

**  
  
**

* * *

**  
  
**

By all rights, it ought to be an overestimation to say that Callum’s eyes sparkle, but it isn’t. He’s overflowing with excitement, in that human way where it seems like their skin is porous to emotion and just can’t hold in everything they’re feeling. 

He’s walking backwards ahead of Rayla up the narrow, sloped road, barely avoiding bumping into people as he pours forth with information and stories. It’s as if he has some kind of joy disease, and not for the first time, Rayla finds herself infected. The weather -- as perfect a late-summer day as anyone could ask for -- only makes the symptoms stronger. 

By the fact that they’re getting closer again to the castle, rather than farther away, she can tell that they’re on the back half of the loop-shaped tour. It’s a date and an education at the same time, as he points out the signs on buildings, telling her what they mean. An apothecary, a butcher, a tavern, a florist -- at the last of these, Callum dips inside for a moment and comes out with a tall purple flower that has a dreamy smell. This, he presents to Rayla in an exaggeratedly dramatic fashion, coaxing a laugh out of her.

Some of what he says is obvious, other parts are going to be a bit harder to remember. (She’s already forgotten what the flower is called.) It’s a strange reminder that the future is uncertain: how long will she be here? How important will it be to know these things?

“It’s so great getting to show you everything,” Callum rambles, “I mean, properly this time -- now that you don’t have to be in disguise, and we can just walk around, in the open, enjoying things. Oh, you’re not like, allergic to anything, are you? I don’t think I’ve ever asked you that.”

“Not as far as I know,” Rayla answers through a smile. “I don’t think very many elves have allergies.”

“Oh. Well, good! No worries, then! Hey! You haven’t actually _tried_ Barius’ jelly tarts, have you? I mean for all that me and Ezran talk about them...” Callum realizes out loud. “Do you want to? We’re right by the bakery.”

Truthfully, she’s working on the assumption that it’s all in the mind -- that the tarts are a symbol of home and comfort to the princes, which is their real value, because surely they can’t be as great as they sound. Still, might as well find out what all the fuss is over.

Callum hedges. “Just let me know if you get tired or something, I know it’s probably a lot, the last few days here.”

“I’m _fine_ . After all that, you think I can’t handle a _guided tour_ and a guest room in a castle? Oh no!” Rayla jibes, sodden with sarcasm but still smiling, “The softest bed I’ve ever slept on in my life! _However will I cope?_ ”

He stops, and shifts to walk beside her. “I didn’t mean that at all! I was little, but I remember when my mom became queen, how everything changed. We had to do all these fancy dinners and events in the other kingdoms. It’s okay to get homesick, or just want to be left alone sometimes.”

“If I promise to tell you if that happens, will you stop worryin’?” Rayla asks, though secretly she thinks she might be accidentally enjoying being fussed over a tad.

“Mmm, I’ll _try,_ ” he says in jest, probably having a bit of fun doing the fussing himself.

Callum takes her hand and leads the way through the gathering crowd with purpose now. He’d mentioned earlier that it’s usually a lot quieter, but the announcement of a ten-day festival to celebrate the new peace (and warm people to the new regent) has spread at the speed of gossip, somehow faster than elf or beast. Between the good weather and the visitors already beginning to arrive from the outlying villages, it adds up to more humans than Rayla’s ever seen in one place. 

Mindfully, she keeps her eyes on the back of Callum’s head and tries not to pay too much attention to the sidelong looks she’s getting from the people they pass. After all, they’re not going to have very much choice but to get used to things, are they? 

Rather than glare back the way she halfway wants to, she thinks happy thoughts and tries to look pleasant. Might as well make the process smoother for the _next_ elf who walks through here. 

She smells the bakery before she sees it -- sugar and yeast and some kind of warm spice she isn’t familiar with. Deep in the shadow of the castle, the little building seems to butt right up against a sharp rise in the ground. 

“In here!” Callum gestures into the shadows beneath the arched door. The inside is over-warm, and equipment and tools dominate the open space, which feels a little more like what Rayla is used to. 

“Prince Callum!” That must be Barius. “You look like you’re doing well, getting settled back in at home, and your… friend?”

“Girlfriend,” Callum corrects, making both himself and Rayla blush. “Rayla, Barius, Barius, Rayla. Sorry I never introduced you properly, back at the Storm Spire.”

Barius chuckles at this in a way that sounds good-natured enough. “It _was_ rather overwhelming, wasn’t it?” He wipes flour-covered hand as heavy as an axe-head on his apron before extending it, and Rayla shakes it, the way she’s seen other humans do. 

She must get it at least approximately right, because he doesn’t look uncomfortable, or say anything about it. 

“Everything was okay when you got back?” Callum checks. 

“Oh, yes! Hit the ground running, of course, what with the festival. Feels good to be back home in the routine.” 

“Right, yeah, you’re probably really busy,” Callum hedges, but then says quickly, “--but Rayla’s never had a jelly tart, so…”

This gets a full belly-laugh out of the man. “Boy, you and your brother’s schemes for free sweets are getting out of control if you’re roping _girls_ into it now! Alright, alright, what kind of fruit d’you like… Rayla, was it?” 

“It was,” Rayla says, feeling her smile go from nervous-fake to real in the face of the man’s genuine warmth. For what feels like the hundredth time in the last few days, she says to a human, “Nice to meet you.”

“Now I don’t have any Xadian fruits _yet,_ but I’m hoping to try baking with them now that I’ll have a chance to buy them--”

“Whatever you recommend is fine, I’m sure,” Rayla says, though the truth is that she’s not sure she can name more than the most basic western fruits, and she certainly has no idea which ones are used in baking, or even which she likes. She wishes she could give him some kind of friendly advice about the Xadian varieties, but she’s never baked anything in her life.

He ends up making them a little box sampler to take back with them, tied with a piece of twine and including extras for Ezran and Bait because “Maybe that’ll tide him over a few hours!”

Since the baker is too busy for a long chat, Raylas actual first taste of the much-lauded jelly tart isn’t until they’re all the way up the stairs and inside the wall of the lower bailey.

She stops in her tracks just past the gate and nearly stumbles, all the awareness of her limbs having been diverted to her mouth. There’s still food in her mouth when she says a strangled, _“What.”_

“So?” Callum asks. 

Once she swallows that bite of food, she looks at him, and then at the tart, and then back at Callum. “That baker, you’re _sure_ he’s not a mage?”

“Aha! You like it!” Callum says, as victorious in his tone as if he’d made it himself.

“It’s _amazin’_ ,” Rayla admits, almost ashamed to have such strong feelings about a pastry, knocked down by a wave of flavor so much more intense than the foods she’s accustomed to. The buttery sweetness is almost too much, except that it’s cut and balanced perfectly by the sour notes of the fruit. “I thought you and Ezran were _exaggerating--_ ”

“Nope,” Callum pops the _p-_ sound as he gloats, but then his posture softens, as though he’s remembered something. “Uh--well, we’re back, anyway. So, I should probably take some of these to Ezran and go help him get ready for tonight. Are you going to be there? At the festival… opening… banquet... thingy?” 

“I guess so? I mean, what _else_ would I do?”

“You don’t have to. Seriously. I can have someone bring you up dinner or something, if you’d rather not. No pressure.”

Rayla’s leans in, examining, when she says, “Sounds almost like you don’t _want_ me to go?”

“What!?” Callum’s voice goes up about three octaves. “No nonono, I do want you to go! With me! I just--”

“ _With_ you?” Rayla smirks, eagerly seizing upon the opportunity to tease. “Is this some kind of storybook thing? Are you picturing me in a big stupid poufy dress?”

“That’s just it,” Callum says, the look on his face suggesting he very well might have been picturing that. “I know you probably wouldn’t like wearing the--well the clothes can be uncomfortable for sure, and--if you’re there with me, people will be _looking at you_ and it’s not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just--I’m not explaining this well--” he stops, takes a deep breath, and picks up her hands in his. More deliberately, he says, “I just don’t want you to feel pressured, or like you have to be someone you’re not. I’m worried that… we got to know each other _out there,_ where everything was simple.”

“All that with Zym, and everything, _that_ was simple?”

“No! But… yes. In a weird way, yeah. I wasn’t _Prince Callum_ out there. I was just… your friend, or trying to be, and we had a goal, and that was all that mattered. I guess I’m just scared things will be different now.”

“Me too,” Rayla admits, because she promised she would, freezing up a little when she realizes that more vulnerability got through than she intended. “The way you’re goin’ on makes me think the situation is more complicated than I thought. I don’t even know the _regular_ human rules, let alone whatever special royal ones you got.”

“Well don’t worry about that, okay?” Callum reassures. “I don't care. You’re a hero, and you’re my girlfriend, and anyone who worries about how you… hold your fork, or whatever, doesn’t matter. You should have seen how my mom reacted to people scolding _her_ about this stuff. She used to say _pointing out other people’s etiquette mistakes is the biggest mistake there is,_ so anyone who gives you trouble would be out of line anyway.”

“You’re sure? Even if I look like a total barbarian?” The smile starts to creep back on to Rayla’s face. 

“Even then.”

“Nothing to fret over then, I suppose… and hey, thanks to your mum, loosening folk up for me.”

It’s Callum’s turn to sound soft, even going a little misty-eyed when he says, “I bet you two would have gotten along really well.” 

He pulls her into a tight, unexpected-but-welcome hug that smells of the dried flowers they keep in the castle closets. For a moment everything else fades away, and she is filled with confidence in how perfectly fine everything will surely be. 

**  
  
**

* * *

**  
  
**

Soren stands outside the door to the throne room and knocks, unsure of how he should handle that at this point, and defaulting to protocol. 

It’s an awkward situation, as while Ezran’s new regent isn’t much bigger than her younger sister, she still doesn’t actually _fit_ inside the human-scale castle. 

Construction has already started on a second bridge across the water on the opposite side of the castle from the first, and a kind of secondary throne room to accommodate a dragon. Scyntyllah already cleared the ground for it herself, destroying a small chunk of forest to make space, and with the help of a few elf mages, progress is swift.

Until then, though, a series of messengers is running information and orders back and forth, and a few specific elves have been appointed to represent Scyntyllah and assist Ezran with duties she’s delegated to him.

Those aren’t the only new faces among the staff, as Soren realizes when the doors open. 

“Soren!” Ezran leaps up from where he was, not _on_ the throne itself, but in a sitting area that’s been set up by the windows. The idea, apparently, is to have Ezran tutored there. 

“I uh…” Soren stumbles, “I’m not actually sure what I’m supposed to call you, now, title-wise.”

“Who cares? You’re my friend, just use my name.”

“Yeah, but I’m also your staff,” Soren points out. “Anyway, what’s up?”

“Actually, that’s what I called you about. I wanted to introduce… da-da _daaaa,_ brand new crownguard!” Ezran indicates to the two elves coming up behind him. “They’re going to be helping me out with stuff and keeping me safe! Kind of like guards and assistants all in one. They’re really nice.”

“Wait, what?” Soren looks them over, not sure if he should be pleased or wounded. Then, recovering badly: “Uh… nice to... meet you?”

They look for all the world like they’re _younger_ than he is, though it’s a little hard to tell with elves. 

The one on the left looks like all the drawings of Earthblood elves in books, about Soren’s height but extremely slender and pale, even greenish. His coloring on a human would look sickly. 

His hair is tied back and wrapped tightly in ribbon, but what Soren can see of it is long and dark brown, near black but not quite. Emerging through it are horns that look more like small antlers, with only one branching point each -- that contributes to the young look. Do they get more when they get older, or does it stay that way?

On the right, the girl is completely different, a kind of Earthblood elf Soren’s never heard of. She’s almost as tall as the boy is, but obviously more muscular, with a gray complexion heavily mottled with darker gray freckles. Tied back as it is in a low bun, he can’t tell how long her is, but the color of it is like a peach skin. Her horns are greenish, faceted like salt or gems, and slanted sharply backwards along the line of her head. 

Both of them are armored, and armed.

It’s the girl that introduces herself first, with a huge smile: “Hey there, name’s Narampu, I’m Rootfolk, good to meet you, I never met a human before a few days ago, but I gotta say, so far it’s been _choice!_ You’re Soren then? Heard _so much_ about you, all good, promise.”

“Uh, right,” Soren says, smiling despite himself, unable to mount any kind of defense against her assault of cheerfulness. 

“Hello,” says the boy in a soft, uncertain tone. He adds, haltingly, “My name is Ylai, sorry, about my speaking.”

“He’s Branchfolk. I’d say he’s from the wops,” Narampu explains, “but you probably feel the same about me, eh, Ylai? Anyway, don’t worry about him. He speaks common fine, he’s just out of practice and a little shy, but he’s fierce as anything in a fight.”

Ylai glances sidelong at Narampu, but says nothing.

Ezran says, “Ylai’s teaching me some Branchfolk words. And his older brother is my new tutor, so I’ll probably get to learn some things that way, too.”

It’s a lot to take in. 

“I… I’m happy to meet both of you,” Soren says, and then, to Ezran, “I’m just a... little confused.”

There’s no polite way to say _if they’re going to be the crownguard now, what am_ I _supposed to do?_

Ezran frowns for a minute, like something doesn’t add up, and then says, “Oh. You haven’t talked to Opeli?”

“I… no?” _Opeli?_ The situation only gets weirder, apparently. 

“Oh. I’m... I didn’t know,” Ezran says. “She said she needed someone, like a kind of guard-slash-helper, like Narampu and Ylai for me, because of her new position? And she suggested you and Corvus, because of everything before. I think she wanted to make sure whoever it was was… you know…”

“On the right side of things,” Soren realizes out loud. That _is_ important, for a job like hers. If it’s just some random person, there’s no way to know for sure whether they’re really on board or not. It’ll take a lot of trust, he hadn’t even thought of that.

That means Opeli really trusts him, apparently, which feels good.

Ezran hedges, “The way she was talking I kind of thought she’d already talked to you about it. You’ve already done so much though, if you don’t want to--”

“No, it’s fine, I’m happy to do whatever’s needed,” Soren hears himself say. It’s true, though he’s not sure where it’s coming from, as off-kilter as he suddenly is. “Everything’s crazy right now. If helping Opeli makes things run smoother, I’ll do it.”

“You’re the best!” Ezran brightens. “You’re right, everything _is_ crazy, I’m _so_ glad I can count on you and everyone. Scyntyllah will be really happy, too.”

“Well, that’s good, right? Happy Queen Regent, happy everybody else?” Soren offers, feeling the world stabilize beneath his feet again. He’s doing what has to be done, doing the right thing, just like before. 

It might even be kind of interesting, doing a whole new job that didn’t exist until now. _Assistant-Minister-of-Justice_ sounds kind of cool, when he thinks about it. Or maybe _Deputy-Minister-of-Justice?_

There’ll be time to workshop it later. 

“I think she wanted you to do something tonight, after the big dinner thing,” Ezran says. “You might want to let her know if that’s okay…”

“Oh, yeah that’s fine! As long as I get dinner I’m good. I’ll go tell her.” And then, to Narampu and Ylai, “Anyway, good meeting you two! I’m still a crownguard at heart, so if you mess up taking care of Ezran, you’ll have me to answer to, got it?”

“No worries, we’re on the job!” Narampu says, all smiles. 

Ylai just nods solemnly, which is acceptable as well. 

Even if Ezran isn’t one to stand on ceremony, Soren still does a little bow on his way out of the throne room, from force of habit. _Now_ he just has to go and find Opeli. 

**  
  
  
**

* * *

**  
  
  
**

Rayla holds the hug in her mind when she’s staring down a wardrobe of big, stupid, poufy dresses. Just the look of them is enough to make her wonder how human women manage. Even the most ornate dresses in the Silvergrove don’t hold a candle to the sheer _volume_ of fabric. How do they go to the toilet? Or go down steps without falling on their faces? Do they need help to get into and out of these things? They must, surely?

The room is large and quiet, with a ceiling almost three times Rayla’s height, decorated in sunset colors -- burgundies and reds set against a backdrop of dark wood and stone. The curtains stretch from ceiling to floor, and the thick rug mutes her every step. 

The first night, it felt like sleeping in a beautiful tomb, but she’s already getting used to it (at least, if she keeps the window open.) Maybe she can give one of the dresses a try too? 

Next to the plush bed, there is a chain, which she has been told rings a bell downstairs when pulled and summons someone to assist with whatever she needs. She hasn’t yet touched it, leery of bothering anyone, overly conscious of both her own discomfort with being served and of how the human staff might feel about taking requests from any elf, let alone one who so recently visited with ill intent.

Ultimately, and somewhat shockingly, it’s _Lujanne_ who rescues her. Her voice echoes down the corridor -- confirming directions -- moments before she bursts through the door. 

“Rayla!” She says, “Oh good, I’m not too late--”

“Too late for what?” Rayla checks, mildly suspicious. “What in Xadia are _you_ doin’ here?”

“They haven’t coerced you into one of those ridiculous contraptions,” she gestures toward the wardrobe. “I was invited to help the new Minister of Justice with something? Luna Tenebris is minding the Moon Nexus now that she’s awake, you see -- anyway it seems I arrived too early, so I went looking for you, to say hello, and they said you were in a guest room getting dressed for a party _,_ well in _what,_ I thought, and then realized what must be happening. Fortunately, I’ve come _prepared.”_

“Prepared?” The word does absolutely nothing to allay Rayla’s anxiety.

Lujanne places her bag on the edge of the bed and digs around in it for a few moments before pulling out a pile of shiny fabric. When she spreads it out, it becomes clear exactly what it is: a very simple gown -- a single, structured layer with long sleeves that end in the same gentle bell-shape as the skirt does, along with a pair of matching slippers.

“I invented this,” Lujanne explains. “It’s an illusion dress! You put it on, and then I can cast a spell on it to look as elaborate as you want, and all the while, you are _completely_ comfortable. What do you think?”

“I think I can put it on by myself, at least, and that’s a start,” Rayla says, pleased to have a trick up her sleeve.

Once Rayla shimmies into the dress, Lujanne walks her to the mirror and asks, “Well? What should we do with it?”

Rayla hesitates. One hand picks at the edge of the opposite sleeve. The material isn’t _just_ comfortable, it looks and moves like poured silver. “Actually…”

“Yes?”

“What if we just... kept it this way?” Rayla suggests, rather liking the look of it as is. She doesn’t know almost anything of what makes something fashionable, or of what humans would think of it, but she has no confidence that Lujanne does either. “Do you think that would be okay?”

“A little boring, isn’t it?” Lujanne muses, arms folded across her chest. Is that _disappointment_ Rayla detects? Did she want to do something more?

“Maybe,” Rayla says, “but it’s nice. Feels more like _me_ than any of that other stuff.”

“Well, suit yourself,” Lujanne shrugs. She does a quick spell just to tweak the fit, mostly so that Rayla, a bit shorter than Lujanne, won’t trip on the hem of the skirt, and leaves it at that. 

She’s only just sorted herself when there’s a soft tapping at the door. Lujanne puts one finger to her lips and goes to answer it.

Lujanne opens the door a crack. “Yes?”

From the other side, a yelp, and then Callum’s voice, uncertain, confused: “Lujanne! I didn’t know you’d be--uhh--I was going to walk Rayla to dinner--”

“Oh, were you?” Lujanne presses.

Rayla has no patience for it. “Lujanne, stop torturing Callum, I’m dressed, let ‘im in.”

“Fine, fine,” Lujanne says, opening the door the rest of the way and walking out through it into the hallway, off to whatever odd thing she plans to do next.

The second she’s out of the way, Rayla gets a look at Callum, and panic is like a needle in her chest. He’s in this alarmingly regal getup, predominantly in various shades of red but with an ivory-and-gold vest, and is that a _cape_ coming off his shoulders? It _is --_ she approaches him and lifts the corner of it, getting a look at the red lining and the gold trim.

“You look uh…” Callum takes a shallow breath, and then the words start tumbling one after another, “I mean, I know I’m _supposed_ to tell you you look beautiful, but you really do, even if I _wasn’t_ supposed to say it, I would still--”

Rayla shuts him up with a brief, barely-there touch of her lips to his. She’s actually grateful that he’s openly anxious. Something about being around him when he’s jittery like that makes her feel like _she_ has to be the solid one, and it settles her own nerves.

“You look… princey,” she returns, “I don’t know, you’re not _supposed_ to look princey. You’re meant to look like an unwashed ragamuffin that fell out of a tree.”

Callum laughs, cringes, laughs a little more. “That bad?”

“No,” she says, because it’s not bad at all. “I’ll get used to it, if I have to.”

“You won’t have to,” Callum assures, “I promise this isn’t normal, we _never_ do this. I think everyone’s getting a little carried away. Oh, but you know what’s cool?”

“What’s cool?” Rayla asks, as they begin to walk together, normalcy settling back in all at once. They pass by a darkened window, and she gets a brief glance at the two of them together, dressed up like this. 

Despite herself, she has to admit it’s a good look. 

“I talked to the tailor about the whole mage-wing thing, and he’s making me a new jacket with sleeves that tie shut underneath, instead of being sewn, so all I have to do is--” he gestures like he’s tugging something under his arm, “--pull the strings and I can wing out without needing new clothes every time.”

Alright, she admits it, that _is_ a bit cool. 

It turns out at dinner that she’s not the only elf in the room. Not only are there a few visitors invited by Janai, and some Moonshadow elves from another settlement near the Silvergrove, but seated right at the head table only a few chairs away, on the other side of Ezran from Callum, are two Earthblood elves. 

_Earthblood elves?_

Rayla is at least vaguely familiar with the Branchfolk -- their largest settlement isn’t far from the Silvergrove, though the location moves around the woods by magic, so the exact distance is always changing. They’re known to visit every so often, either for trade or for her own people and theirs to help one another with something. It’s mostly the craftselves and the mages who associate, and she’s too young to have ever taken part anyway, but their style and demeanor is familiar to her, and she’s tried a bit of their (somewhat unusual) food. 

The Rootfolk, though… while she’s heard stories of them, this moment, here, in a _human castle,_ is her first time ever seeing one in real life. What are the odds of that?

She didn’t think they usually hung around together, but the two elves here (both looking to be no older than Rayla herself) natter on like old friends -- or at least, the Rootfolk elf girl does most of the nattering, while the Branchfolk boy picks at his dinner with the distant, stoic silence Rayla’s used to seeing in his kind. 

There’s a reason that Moonshadow and Branchfolk tend to get on well, after all.

The seating distance is just a bit too much for it to be comfortable for her to have a conversation, but she leans forward and waves politely. Both of them wave back, the girl with considerably more energy. 

Once the music picks up and the dancing starts in earnest, Callum leans in. “Hey, do you want to go for a walk? I want to get out of here before someone tries to make either of us dance. I’m sure given five minutes you’d be better at it than I am, but that is a _very low bar._ ”

 _“Absolutely,”_ Rayla says, at least as eager as Callum is to avoid that particular awkwardness. 

It’s impossible to be _entirely_ discreet, being who they are, but they do their best to sneak away, into the lantern-speckled courtyard under a cloudless night. People are dancing out here, too. Callum gestures toward stairs onto a parapet walk that Rayla realizes, as they reach the top, is the same one down which Callum fled from her, through the door at the far end.

She tries not to beat herself up about it. 

There was no way of knowing. 

He’s clearly not thinking about it anyway, looking out and up across the tops of distant trees.

“You okay?” She checks in -- it’s not something she’s used to doing, but Callum does it so often she’s starting to pick up the habit. “Not hearing the noise again, are you?”

“No, I haven’t heard it since we got back across from Xadia. Hey, can I tell you something?” Callum asks quietly, confidentially. She nods, and he goes on, leaning with his elbows on the crenelated wall: “Ever since the whole… connecting with the Sky Primal thing, I just feel better outside. Is that weird?”

“Doesn’t seem weird to me, though everyone’s gonna think I turned you into some kind of wild creature,” Rayla says, resting against the same merlon, close enough that their shoulders and hips are touching.

“We should have a secret signal, don’t you think?” Callum says out of nowhere.

“For what?” 

“For like, if one of us is in some horrible conversation, and we want to leave but we can’t come up with a good excuse. Then the other one can come over like _oh, come quick, it’s urgent,_ for a rescue, that kind of thing,” Callum describes. “How about…” 

Rayla watches as he taps a pattern on his leg with his fingers. _Thumb-first-thumb-last._ She copies it, the same despite one less finger in the middle. They share a conspiratorial smile as he taps it on the back of her hand, and she does it right back to him, as practice. 

Then Rayla adds, part of the conversational game, “But what if we can’t do that? Like what if you’re carrying something heavy, or I can’t see your hands? Shouldn’t we have a code _word_ too?”

“Good thinking!” Callum nods, grinning. “What’s the code word?”

“How ‘bout…” Rayla thinks for a moment, and then says, _“My friend, Wren._ You don’t know any real Wrens, do you?”

“No, do you?”

“Nope! So it’s perfect. If I need help, and I know you can hear me, I’ll talk about _my friend Wren._ You know _oh, my friend Wren was sayin’ blahdeeblah--_ and then you come and save me, or vice versa. Agreed?”

“It’s a deal!” Callum says, and instead of shaking on it or anything like that, he plants a blush-inducing kiss on her cheek. 

She glances past him again, by accident, and he turns to follow the path of where she’s looking. When he looks back, there is a question on his face.

“It’s nothing,” Rayla says. “I was just remembering… you know. That was…”

A cloud seems to pass over Callum’s face. “Yeah. I wonder what they’re going to do with all that stuff, now?”

“Stuff?”

“You know, Lord Viren’s stuff, and… and Claudia’s, too, I guess. I mean, they’re going to want to use the rooms for something, right?” Callum thinks out loud. “And they can’t just toss it all, it’s too dangerous.”

“Dangerous is right,” Rayla agrees. “Like whatever he was going to do with--”

They look at each other, and seemingly have the same thought at the same time. 

“The coins,” they both say. 

“No--” Rayla cautions. “No no no, you _can’t_ be thinking what I think you’re thinking.”

“C’mon, just a quick look! Dad used to say Lord Viren wrote almost as much as he read, maybe he’s got something about the coins in there. We could solve the mystery, right now. And if we wait, they’ll probably… I don’t know, burn all his books or something.”

“And good riddance to ‘em!”

“I agree! But… this was bothering you, it’s bothering me, too. We won’t touch anything weird, I promise. We’ll just grab some journals, and if we don’t find anything useful, we’ll… we’ll burn them ourselves, okay? What’s the worst that could happen?” Sotto voice, out the side of his mouth, he says, “It’s not like he’s going to show up and get mad, is it? You don’t even have to come along if you don’t want to.”

“Fine,” Rayla says, “If you’re going to insist, I’d rather go with you so I can smack you silly if you get any weird ideas.”

“Hey--” Callum says, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Dark magic almost _killed_ me. I swear, I don’t want any more to do with it than you do, but this’ll be no different than reading a history book, just… if the history book was written by someone we know.”

 _Someone we know was dangerous,_ she thinks, but with a _well, get on with it_ gesture, they both take off at a quick pace down the parapet walk, the cheerful sounds of the party below them going silent as they slip through the door.

**  
  
**

* * *

**  
  
**

The ceremony room is at the top of a squat tower at the back corner of the courtyard, and Soren takes the steps two at a time. Past the double doors is a round space ringed with enormous arched stained-glass windows, each of which open outward from the center to tiny balconies. The floor, too, is tiled in a delicate spiral mosaic consisting of more shades of red than Soren can name. 

For the most part, it is empty, but for a series of benches on each side and a little dais with a lectern in the front, for whoever is officiating whatever. 

Normally the room is used in the day, to maximize the lively feel of the design, but tonight it’s lit only by torches burning on the walls between the window frames. He’s never been here at night (he’s only been here once or twice in his life) and it’s actually a little spooky, if he’s honest.

It’s also _hot,_ with all the little fires burning on an already-warm summer evening, especially in armor.

Opeli and Lujanne are already waiting.

“I’m here! Uh, long time no see?” Soren says, feeling a little awkward about the last time he and Lujanne saw one another.

“Long for a human, maybe,” Lujanne answers with a smirk. She doesn’t look upset. Or at least, if she is, she seems like she’s not going to make it any weirder than it already is. 

“Soren, thank you again for coming on such short notice,” Opeli gets to the point. “Are you clear on what you’re doing?”

“From what you said before, it sounds like I’m standing somewhere, looking guard-y, and handing some stuff out to everybody. That’s about it, right?”

“Right,” Opeli smiles. “Lujanne will be on the right side of the room, so you’ll be over here. When I indicate, you’ll hand out the bands to everyone, and then Lujanne will do the spell. I’m sure there won’t be any trouble, but better safe than sorry, right?”

“Can’t argue with you there,” Soren says, taking the bundle of embossed white ribbons from Opeli. All sounds easy enough. 

He got roped into this late, so he can’t exactly complain about not having all of the information yet -- and anyway, he’ll be standing right here for the ceremony, so he can pick it all up as they go along, and anything he still doesn’t understand, he can just ask Opeli afterward. No sweat, aside from the _actual_ sweat. 

Opeli opens the doors, and Soren counts as fifty elves -- half Moonshadow, and half Sunfire, file in and fill the first third of the room. They keep to their own kind for the most part, but do stand in a loose formation. 

Their purpose and severity is written on their faces, and while they are unarmed, their clothes have clear hooks and harnesses for weapons that were almost certainly left right outside the door. 

“Hello, and welcome,” Opeli says, but does not indicate for them to sit. Maybe it’ll be quick? 

> “Thank you all for volunteering your service in the name of the Katolis Ministry of Justice. I know that it is probably no small sacrifice for you to work beneath a human leader, and I hope you understand that I see your devotion to a brighter future, and _commend_ you for it. 
> 
> “It is not only me who will depend on you. The nation will need you -- and so will your own people. If peace among the races of Xadia is to grow, it will be a delicate flower indeed, and we must nurture it with great care.
> 
> “As much as it pains me, I know that there will be those who are not prepared for change, those who do not want to give up dark magic, and those who do not want to live in peace. My aim, as Minister of Justice, appointed by Her Royal Highness Queen Regent Scyntyllah, is to care for these individuals, to meet them where they are, and help teach them a better way and bring them into the fold. We as a world cannot afford to risk any kind of repeat of what happened with Lord Viren.
> 
> “However, I cannot do this if I cannot find them, and while the Queen Regent generously praised my intuition, our nation is large, and I am only one person. 
> 
> “As a result, I have requested your assistance to detect and record those who may wish to do harm to non-humans, to harm the humans that have pledged to move forward, or to stand in the way of this progress -- including by the continued use of dark magic. Once their identities are known, then it will be possible for us to teach them, to help them change their minds and see the beautiful future we wish to create together.
> 
> “Soren, please distribute the bands.”

Soren steps off the dais and into the crowd, handing a ribbon each elf. The Moonshadow elves seem to know instantly what to do with them, affixing them at the wrist using the clip present on each, while the Sunfire elves glance across at them and figure out what they’re meant to do that way. 

“Thanks to the efforts of the Moonshadow Mage Lujanne, these bands will allow you to appear as humans, both to sight and touch. Simply don them when you are working,” Opeli says, putting on an extra band to demonstrate the method, and then unclasping it again, “and then remove them any time you want the illusion to break.”

Soren watches as Lujanne looks toward Opeli, who nods. 

Lujanne traces a glowing rune in the air, and says something incomprehensible. From the central point of the rune, a silvery haze spreads like ripples on a pond, and the bands that the elves wear all glow brightly for a moment. 

At the end of it, Soren looks out over the fifty elves, _knowing_ what they are, but also knowing what his eyes would see, if he were to walk into the room now for the first time: 

Fifty perfectly convincing, ordinary humans. 

**  
  
**

* * *

  
  


The space is dark -- which it would be, of course, but it’s _strikingly_ dark, not even the light from outside sneaking in, so the curtains must be drawn. It isn’t as if Rayla hasn’t been here once before, but she’s unable to conjure a clear memory of what it looked like then. 

There is _one_ light, strangely. In the far corner, high enough on the wall that it seems to be sitting alone on a bookshelf, a single candle burns violet, despite the room being empty and cold for… how long? A week, at least? 

It doesn’t throw enough light to really make it clear what it’s doing, but she doesn’t want to go anywhere near it to find out.

Callum is busy. He fumbles along the wall until she hears the sound of him smacking into heavy fabric, which he bunches up and ties off so that at least the starlight, and the light from the torches outside, can make it in. 

“What’s that?” Rayla whispers, irrationally. There’s no one here but them. “The creepy candle?”

“I don’t know,” Callum shrugs. “It’s been there a long time, I’ve never really thought about it.”

“Not… dangerous?”

“I don’t think so? I mean, I wouldn’t go messing with it--”

“Don’t have to tell me twice.” Rayla holds her arms close to her body, tucking her hands around her elbows as if wanting to be certain she doesn’t accidentally touch anything at all. She wanders to the left side of the room, where it’s mildly more normal-looking, and looks through the gloom at the paintings on the walls. 

Somewhere to the right, Callum says, “Help me out, and we can get out of here faster.”

“What d’you mean _help you out?_ The man clearly had about a _million_ books, what are we meant to do, read them all?”

“Hmm,” he considers. “If we want to check journals, it’d be something handwritten, not printed, and probably nothing with fancy binding. Start with the stuff that’s _not_ gathering dust.”

It’s not as if a book will bite, right? 

Still, Rayla puts her hand inside her sleeve when she picks up books and opens them up. Can’t be too careful. 

A few likely candidates are assembled on the table after a brief sweep, and Callum starts to leaf through them. 

“Do you know what you’re lookin’ for?” Rayla asks. 

“Just… anything about… huh, I never knew he could draw,” Callum says, noting the diagrams that litter some of the pages. “I don’t see… wait!”

“What, what?”

“Okay, this isn’t about the coins, but… it seems like he was trying a bunch of spells for removing illusions and stuff. He’s got a whole list of them. Says here that supposedly Moon Nexus water can temporarily remove all concealments. That’s great!”

“Why’s _that_ great?” Rayla deadpans.

“It’s not dark magic!” Callum says. “There’s no spell, nothing, you just get the thing wet with Moon Nexus water and the illusion goes away until it dries. Although… he also says that whatever he was trying to do, it didn’t work… but so what? It wouldn’t hurt to try. If that’s all it takes--”

“Says right there it doesn’t work, what’re you so excited about?” 

“Yeah but it doesn’t say he was trying it on _that._ Maybe it was something more powerful, I don’t know. If he tried it though, that means there’s probably some Moon Nexus water around here somewhere, right?”

“Probably in his creepy dungeon,” Rayla mutters under her breath. “Booby-trapped or something.”

“I don’t know,” Callum says, skeptical. “Ezran figured out how to get down there and was apparently hanging around on his own a bunch and no one even noticed. But hey, if you don’t want to go, it’s fine, I think I remember the… rock… stone… thing, I’ll just go down there on my own, look around, and come _right_ back.”

“ _Oh_ no. _Not_ a chance. I’m not letting you get killed by something stupid just ‘cause I decided to _wait here._ Besides, need I remind you which one of us _did_ the combination alone? Come on, it’s not like _this_ place is that much less creepy anyway.”

In the end, it takes _both_ of them to remember how it goes to get down there, and when the staircase finally opens they high-four (well, five in Callum’s case) to celebrate the victory. As unsettling as the place is (there are spots Rayla just doesn’t even want to _look_ at or think about _at all)_ it is extremely well-organized, and Callum finds the labeled jar almost immediately. 

There’s even a little water left in the jar. 

They don’t talk very much on the way back to the guest room where Rayla left the coins with her other things -- Callum’s probably preoccupied with not dropping the jar, and Rayla’s so anxious about what they might see that she’s not sure whether she’s hoping it works or, weirdly, hoping it doesn’t.

“Okay,” Callum says, placing the jar on the guest-room writing desk, next to the coin pouch. “Are you ready?”

“Not really, but it’s not like I’m gonna get any _more_ ready. Just get on with it,” Rayla urges. 

If this has to be done, she just wants it over with. 

Rayla looks away as Callum pours about half the remaining water into the empty basin on the table -- not a bad idea, to avoid using it all, but there’s not much to work with. Her heart feels like a trapped bug, fluttering into walls. 

_One more Moonshadow elf for my collection._ Does she even _want_ to know what he meant?

“I just…” Callum asks, “Do you want me to do it or do you want to do it?”

“You do it,” Rayla decides in an instant. “Just… you do it.”

She stands behind him, ready to push him aside or grab him and run or _something,_ as he draws a coin from the pouch and drops it into the basin. 

They both wait, breath held, for what feels like ages but can’t possibly be more than a few seconds, until the image -- the _moving_ image -- resolves on the surface of the coin. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Hey Prolix, Rayla's dress sounds suspiciously like Yvaine's dress from Stardust, is that a deliberate reference?"
> 
> Yes. 
> 
> "Hey Prolix, are you using slang to suggest that mineral Earthblood elves are like Xadian New Zealanders?"
> 
> You're darn right I am. When Narampu speaks to me, she has the cutest New Zealand accent ever.
> 
> As always, if you enjoyed something about this chapter, please let me know. :-)


	4. Book Four: Earth | Chapter Four: Deep Roots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Trust yourself. You’ve survived a lot, and you’ll survive whatever is coming._   
>  **—Robert Tew**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are afoot.

**Book Four: Earth**

**Chapter 4: Deep Roots**

At the far edge of the continent, on an island to which no bridge exists, enormous, vine-tangled trees grow in clustered families. Their roots stretch down beneath dark water so thick with life that the covering of duckweed and algae alone makes it look like solid ground. 

A stranger to the land traveling alone would be as likely as not to stumble into the muck while swatting away mosquitoes and midges, and without assistance, make ideal prey for the long-jawed lizards that patrol the tributaries. What the pour soul left behind would be a delight for the giant mudrats, who would in turn have to contend with the birds and the bugs that would want their own share. 

And when the flies came (and the flies always come) the dragonflies would have their own banquet, neatly rounding out the cycle, consuming both the parasitic insects that start the process and the scavengers that end it. 

There is a reason that the dragonfly is the symbol of Evenere. 

The capital city is built half upon the water, reachable from the other settlements by shuttle-gondola, the same method by which citizens go from section to section of the long boardwalks that connect homes, business, and even the castle itself. The city is a marvel of engineering and maintenance, an endless tidal give and take between the stubborn humans who live there and the relentless entropy of the superorganism that is the swamp.

No matter who rules over the nation, they are rightly proud of the accomplishments of their people, and King Cato, crowned at twenty years old in the wake of his mother’s untimely passing, is no exception.

Today, though, the entire island appears as little more than ruins. 

Overhead in the sky, beyond the broad leaves and branches, several dragons make one pass, and then another. When they swoop low to investigate the situation further, they see the same thing they did from higher up: destruction and abandonment.

At the margins of the city, having had to use magic even to get this far, Moonshadow riders on the backs of shadowpaws close in to investigate, and their findings are no different. Wooden houses have been reclaimed by plant life or fallen into the water, bridges and walkways are rotted and broken, even burnt in places, and there is not even the slightest sign of human life to be seen. 

Silently, two of the elf scouts gesture to one another. Their mounts pick their way cautiously to the capital city’s main agora, which is likewise a wreck. On a post near the center of the square, a single word is carved:

V A S A R Y A I R E N

The first elf mutters to himself, “What does that _mean?”_

“I uh… Sea-veil? Someone’s name, perhaps?” Answers the second. “Or the name of the town?”

“The carving is fresh. Look at it.”

“A _different_ town? Perhaps it is where they all went?” The second speculates further. “It sounds like a Tidebound phrase. You know how _they_ are about borders.”

“Not good, that’s for sure.”

“Perhaps _elves_ did this?”

“Perhaps,” the first considers warily. 

Neither of them like the idea, and in unison they glance around themselves as though they could be set upon at a moment’s notice. The Marshfolk have not been seen in centuries by anyone of the continent, and rumors abound -- that the swamp gives them great power, that they are primitive and vicious, even that they might be cannibals.

But what would they be doing in the west?

Confident in their conclusion that the humans have gone, and deeply uncomfortable in the environment, all the elves turn back, boarding ships at the nearest coastline to take them back to the mainland. The dragons do one last low pass, practically brushing the treeline, and then depart. 

At a window in the top of the tallest tower in the castle, Cato lifts his crown long enough to run a trembling hand through the shock of red hair on his head, and leads the nation in breathing a sigh of relief. He turns to the lithe, petite elf to his right and reaches out to shake his webbed hand. 

“You were right, Heloae,” says Cato, grinning loosely, almost intoxicated by the sudden rush of calm. “I didn’t mean to doubt you, but I was certain that the Moonshadow riders would sense _something,_ at least.” 

“Yes, well.” Heloae brushes a lock of hair from his mottled green face. He is mischievous, haughty. “The oysters dwell only in the brackish waters of the far west. Since the _rest_ of the elves abandoned this half of the continent, the magic of the moon-pearls is lost to them, likely a matter of myths and legends by now. A pity for them to be cut off from one of the strongest tools of their own magic.”

“Too bad for them, sure, but a good thing for us that you all hung around -- and that the Marshfolk mages could even make use of something like that.”

“The tides and the moon have always been brothers.” Heloae spares a glance to the three mages that wait at his side. “I have no doubt that Evenere will be considered a ruin for ages to come, if you wish it so. I ask only that you consult us, if you believe it safe to break the spell. After all--”

“Really, thank you--”

“We did not do it for _you,_ ” Heloae finishes curtly. A bit softer, he adds: “The _last_ thing we need is the kind of change it seems your kinfolk mean to bring. We do not want any more than you do to be threatened by the petty matters of inland folk. The situation with Evenere _shall_ continue _unchanged_ , yes?”

“Of course, just as promised at the coronation,” Cato assures. He doesn’t want change either, not to his relationship with the elves and not to the way he and his family run the kingdom. 

“Then farewell, and may we return to the usual state.”

Cato and his council watch the departure of the elves politely. There’s something wild just beneath the surface that makes him a bit glad to see the back of them, as glad as he _also_ is that they cast their spell.

 _The usual state_ isn’t a true alliance, exactly, but rather a relationship that consists mostly of mutually ignoring one another. The unwritten treaty with the Marshfolk that stayed in the west when the land was divided dates back nearly to the founding of Evenere. It’s a large island, but not so large that the two civilizations couldn’t make a lot of trouble for each other if they wanted to, and Cato’s ancestors and Heloae’s grandparents all quietly agreed on a peaceful solution.

They don’t _like_ each other, they certainly avoid social calls, but this? This they can do.

Essentially, the rules lie along simple lines: _We respect and protect your space, you respect and protect ours, we let each other be as much as possible, help each other out when push comes to shove, and we tell no other humans or elves about it._

Simple as that.

This _arrangement_ is the secret of Evenere’s storied independence, and now, as the nation plans to isolate itself completely, it will be the entire island’s saving grace.

He imagines that the other humans will send crows and scouts eventually as well, but after this display, he has no doubt in what they will see: a broken, dead, unpleasant place better left alone. Let them think it so. As sad as it is to have to break ties with the other nations, the high council was unanimous: in the wake of the loss at the Storm Spire, there is no viable alternative. 

Dragons will never conquer this land as long as King Cato lives. 

Perhaps one day they will be able to come out of hiding, but until then, Evenere can wait. 

* * *

For awhile it seemed like it might rain, but the clouds have moved on. The night is pleasant enough now: bright, with a breeze that ruffles Claudia’s hair. The only dragons abroad at night are those connected to the Moon Primal, and the seeming lack of those around makes it the safest time to travel. 

Nothing connected to the Star Primal, of course, is anywhere to be seen -- present company excluded -- which isn’t a surprise. As far as Claudia’s concerned, they’re historical things, like extinct animals, though she assumes there must be others out there somewhere. Surely Aaravos isn’t the only one?

Perhaps they’re just uninterested in the goings-on of the continent, like the stars themselves.

A long, narrow strand of sparse woods crouches among the foothills, between a rise in the ground and the river that borders the eastern edge of desert. It is along the edge of that forest that they mostly remain: in the open at night, to take full advantage of the light of the moon and stars, and hidden beneath foliage during the day. 

Aaravos has informed them that there’s (probably, as far as he remembers) a settlement of Branchfolk a bit further to the south, so they’ll have to divert east once they get closer, but for now, this works.

Still, Claudia’s not sure she likes Aaravos any better now than she did when he was a giant bug, even if he _does_ have his uses. 

She’s willing to set aside, at least in part, the fact that he’s an elf. It doesn’t exactly help her to _trust_ him, given the stories she’s been told all her life and the fact that the only two elves she’s ever _met_ were invader assassins, but if her father is willing to overlook it -- and he seems to be -- then Claudia can do the same. 

At least she can do that until he proves otherwise.

She _will_ be on the lookout for him to prove otherwise.

Beyond that, he is _weird,_ and not a fun, cute sort of way. He came out of the cocoon flailing and laughing and touching things like a toddler, and the very next thing he did (after bathing and getting dressed, thank goodness) was to argue with her, for which he also gets zero points. 

The messenger bird was _right there._ Even now she imagines what might have happened if she’d let it get away, if Ezran had had the chance to talk to it -- unacceptable.

There was no time to waste, in that moment, and there Aaravos was, wasting it with _how do you know it’s not a trap_ and _are you sure it’s even real_. 

Of course she had suggested following the noise, and _of course_ she had already considered that it might be dangerous, but it wasn’t as if they could go _home,_ and as long as that was the case anyway, did anybody have any _better_ ideas? 

_Aaravos_ wanted to go looking for the physical location of his prison, but without any leads, he didn’t have a leg to stand on. Dad sided with her, agreeing with her reasoning and deciding that he was just as curious as she was, and south already seemed like the least risky direction to travel. If it turned out to be some kind of trap, they’d handle it together, and Aaravos could join them or not. 

Now, she’s kind of wishing he’d gone with _not._

“Where’s he gone off to now?” Claudia asks, no longer seeing him in her peripheral vision. He keeps doing this -- wandering ahead when they’re taking a break, dragging his feet and falling behind when they’re moving, and generally being a pain to keep track of. 

Sometimes she thinks he’s abandoned them entirely, but like a bad penny, he just keeps turning up.

“Hmm,” Viren answers, glancing around, before gesturing with the hand that holds the eclipse staff, over a hillock. “Over there, I think.”

“How do you know?” She narrows her eyes. How does he _always_ seem to know? Every time she asks, he _supposes_ someplace (ahead, behind, off in some random direction) without having much reason for it, and he always seems to wind up being proven right. Claudia complains, “You know, he was annoying to begin with, but ever since you told him we were going _around_ the desert, he’s really reached a new level. I mean, what did he think we were going to do? Just _wander around_ in the heat and the cold with the snakes? Don’t get me wrong, I _like_ snakes, but, you know, _in moderation._ ” 

Viren only chuckles at that -- a genuine, loose little laugh that almost sounds weird coming out of her dad, given how tense he’s been for… well, _years._ When Claudia thinks about the last time she saw him like this, she’s pretty sure his beard was all one color.

“You know he hasn’t been outside in three hundred years,” he points out. 

“He still isn’t _outside_ ,” Claudia grumbles the correction. “Not really.”

“Try to tell _him_ that.”

“Dad, don’t get mad, but you seem weirdly relaxed, considering that we’re fugitives wandering around enemy territory with a psycho-elf-in-a-fleshsuit and no real plan or knowledge of where we’re going.” 

Her father slows, with a brief distant look as though he’s taking an internal survey of his own sensations. “I think that may be _exactly_ the reason.”

“What is?”

“What you said.”

“The… fugitives… psycho elf… no real plan… thing?” Claudia’s face screws up in confusion. Either dad is getting his revenge for her _speaking Claudia,_ or else maybe this is where she gets it from.

“Yes.”

“Um,” she touches her head, as if warding off a headache. “Is this some kind of back-from-the-dead side effect, or--”

“No, no, I think that’s it. The -- the personal scale, the _immediate_ problem.” he says with a faint sense of surprise, as though he’s working it out as he speaks. “We need so little: Safe places to sleep, food and water, and a to stay out of sight. Between your skills and mine, and Aaravos’ knowledge of the terrain -- outdated though it may be -- we are well beyond equal to our tasks. And then there’s the fresh air, besides. It’s… different. Pleasantly.”

“And… _that’s_ why you’re putting up with his sulking?” Claudia cuts to the point. 

“I’m putting up with his _sulking_ because for the better part of the last decade I’ve been raising two teenagers,” he comments wryly.

Claudia frowns. “So what do you do? If it’s me or… or Soren?” She can think of plenty of instances of sulking, but not of any particular response on her father’s part.

He sighs. “I usually leave you alone until you come around, generally when you get hungry. Of course, in his case--”

“Exactly! Seriously, what _is_ it with elves, _oh, I’m a bit grumpy and not getting my way, better starve myself?”_

“I’m not sure whether or how much he _has_ to eat in that… shell,” her father points out, frowning at the hillock beyond which Aaravos probably is. 

“Speaking of eating, it’s almost dawn,” Claudia indicates to the horizon, and then gestures to the treeline. “Shall we?”

He answers with the same joking play-on-formality that they’ve bounced back and forth since her first etiquette lessons: “Let’s shall.”

They head beyond the treeline, trusting that Aaravos will find them if he wants to. 

The last few days they’ve mostly been eating what they can catch or forage, but as they get closer to where they might get spotted, there’s a sense that it might be better to take special pains not to draw attention to themselves by cooking. They’ve still got biscuits and dried meat from Claudia’s pillaging of the dead soldiers, and even a little fruit from the trees nearby for dessert. 

In amicable silence punctuated by incantations, they use the components they’ve collected on the way to lightly conceal the area. Claudia lays out her cloak, which is all the added warmth and comfort she needs on the plush grass. Her father’s mostly been falling asleep sitting up against trees when he can’t keep watch any longer -- she knows, because she wakes up before him. 

“Are you really telling me you aren’t enjoying yourself, even a little?” He asks her.

“What do you mean?”

His eyebrows go up. He points out, “I notice the purple at the bottom of your hair is freshly re-colored, as of this morning. Goes a bit higher up, too, almost as if you had more materials.”

“Okay, okay, yeah,” Claudia says, pulling her hair over her shoulder as if to protect it from judgment. “Those flowers, they’re all over. Back home there’s barely any, and they’re out for like one week a year, but here--”

“And your morning potion -- has it ever been so good, _or_ so easy to make?”

“No, it's… _really_ good,” she has to admit.

“You see it too, then, the sudden freedom as if we have gone about life wearing a prisoner’s ball and chain every day, and suddenly it's vanished.”

Claudia lets out a defeated huff. Her fingers twist in the cloak material she’s sitting on. “Fine. Yes. It’s nice -- but it's _too_ nice. Doesn’t it make you mad? They’re _hoarding_ all this, leaving humans with the crumbs, and then calling us evil for making use of even those. _”_ She clenches her fists. 

“Of course it does.” Her father’s tone darkens, though he sounds more tired than anything. “ _I’ve_ been angry for a long time. But I’m surprised this is coming now. You’ve studied the exile. This isn’t the first time we’ve discussed this. Surely you felt it for yourself, in that… situation… with the unicorn?”

“This is different!” Claudia insists. The unicorn thing was a mess that she’s still mildly embarrassed about, despite the victory -- sneaking out, getting in way over her head. By the time it was done, everything had happened so fast and she was lucky to get home alive. She remembers really knowing how bad she messed up when dad _wasn’t_ angry -- too busy being relieved. She didn’t have the downtime she has now, to really think about it, about the land, about the past. “Do you think it was like this for them? The people who lived here before?”

“It wasn’t,” says Aaravos, appearing suddenly from behind a tree, making both of them jump. 

“Don’t _do_ that!” Claudia hisses, shoulders up around her ears. There’s laughter in his eyes and she hates it. “How long have you been there?”

“Only a moment,” Aaravos defends, sinking into a cross-legged pose on the grass, ears perked. “Why, were you talking about me?”

 _“No,”_ Claudia and Viren both say at once. Claudia hopes he’s disappointed.

“It wasn’t like this, anyway. It’s like summer longfruit,” Aaravos says, but stops there. 

After a long pause, her father sighs and says, “I don’t suppose you plan to explain what you _mean_ by that?”

“It is possible, if memory serves, to grow a very large fruit of that type, but the taste is lacking. A smaller one has more flavor. When the fruit begins to grow, all the flavor it will ever have is inside of it already. As it grows, it is simply spread thinner and thinner.”

“I’m supposed to believe you’re some kind of gardener, now?” Viren is incredulous.

Aaravos only shrugs and says, “I know things.”

“Wait,” Claudia frowns. “You can’t be saying there was magic? In the west?”

“Of course,” he says, as though she’d asked whether fish can swim. As if explains anything, he says, “Xadia was one land.”

“But now it’s... concentrated… in a smaller space, here, almost exclusively in the east.” Claudia brings her curled hands together, miming something being pressed. “Like a smaller fruit, so it’s stronger.”

“Yes. Naturally.” Aaravos looks back and forth between Claudia and her father, registering their expressions and returning them with a frown of his own “You… didn’t know?”

Claudia has been taught her whole life that the west was always barren, that that was the _reason_ humans were banished there. No one in her life had ever suggested even the slightest thing different. She glances to her father, who is frozen, his spine ramrod-straight, brows practically in his hair, face held as though he is about to speak, but no words come. It’s reassuring -- for a second she worried that this had been kept from her. Clearly that isn’t the case.

“Aaravos,” Viren says, voice low with confused warning. Slowly, as though choosing his words carefully, he asks, “How, _exactly,_ did that concentration happen?”

Aaravos’ lip quirks, a too-slick transition into a smirk, and one eyebrow shifts upward. He leans in closer to her father. His words come out in a smooth roll: “How _exactly_ do you _think?_ ”

* * *

Narampu _loves_ stories and especially stories about humans, that’s pretty much the main thing Callum knows about her so far. The other one, Ylai, doesn’t say much, but he’s not a half-bad listener. He’d been worried about two total strangers being Ezran’s new crownguard, but while he hasn’t made his mind up _completely,_ they’re friendly and warm and Ezran seems to like them, which is the most important thing. 

The three of them originally turned up to Ezran's old room, to help move more of his things into their dad’s room. For almost an hour, though, Ezran’s been goading Callum to _tell them about the time that--_ and, high on an appreciative audience, Callum’s bitten the hook every time. 

He knows Ezran just doesn’t want to go. Last night, they talked about it: how the room is too big, how it smells like dad and makes him upset, how he’s worried about nightmares. It’s just that there’s no safer place in the whole castle, and Queen Regent Scyntyllah is fine, but no one wants to risk anything happening to him before he can grow up and take over again. 

“Why don’t _you_ tell them this one?” Callum suggests, seeing how far the sunbeam on the floor has moved and realizing he probably shouldn’t take up their whole afternoon. Besides, he’s got a drawing to get back to.

“C’monnn, you tell it better,” Ezran says. “Right, Bait?” And then, after a moment, “Bait agrees.”

Callum raises a brow. “Would you _really_ tell me if he didn’t?” 

“Maybe--”

There’s a knock, and both Ezran and Callum say, “Come in!” at the same time. 

“Uh… It’s for Prince Callum. A crow arrived from the Moon Nexus for you.”

“Oh! That’ll be Lujanne!” Callum jumps up. “Sorry, we can do more stories later. I think this might be important. Have you seen Rayla today?”

Ezran shrugs, and neither of his minders seem to know either. 

“It’s fine, I’ll find her. Uh, see you!”

“Later!” Ezran says, and fortunately there isn’t too much disappointment in it. 

Callum’s down the stairs almost as quick as if he’d fallen. He covers his palm with the cuff of his new jacket (he’d expected blue, but it’s mostly ivory with red accents, different, but in a good way) and puts his weight on his hand so he can half-slide down the banister, skipping several steps at a time. 

He’s pretty sure he’s never gotten to the aviary this quickly. 

“Crow Lord?” He calls out as he closes the door behind him. 

“Um, nope!” Answers the Crow Master, emerging from behind a bank of cages. “But hello from me! Sorry I didn’t send your letter up with the guard, but the outside was very clear that only you should handle it. Top secret prince stuff, I guess?”

“Huh, I guess,” Callum acknowledges. “I should probably read this… somewhere private, then.”

“Probably!” Comes the chipper reply. “Would you rate the service you received today as _excellent?”_

“Uh, sure!” He’s not sure exactly what constitutes excellent service, but the Crow Master’s smile brightens visibly and is accompanied with a sunny thumbs-up, which is always nice. 

On the way toward Rayla’s guest room, the parchment _vibrates_ in his hands -- or is that his hands shaking? He wrote an explanation of what they’d done, as comprehensive as he could make it, and of what they’d seen in the coin: Runaan’s face, in perfect detail, _in motion._ He’d looked alarmed, afraid, and in pain, and before the Moon Nexus water had dried, the image had seemed to slam its hand against the edge of the coin, like a palm seen from the other side of a glass.

Of course, they’d had to test the other coins as well, after that. They both knew what they expected to see, and they weren’t wrong, but actually seeing it was… difficult. He’s been trying to keep Rayla’s spirits up, but it hasn’t been easy.

He can’t actually know what she’s feeling, but he can imagine how he’d feel if it were _his_ parents. 

As awkward as it was to do, Callum actually drew a picture along with his letter, to make sure there was no misunderstanding. With Lord Viren and Claudia both gone, he doesn’t really know any other mages outside of Lujanne -- a few elf mages have come and gone from the castle, mostly taking requests from Opeli or Scyntyllah, but they always seem so busy and serious. 

Besides, it _was_ kind of moon magic that had gotten them this far. 

“Rayla?” He knocks. “Rayla, it’s me, Lujanne wrote back.”

A brief silence is followed by a bunch of rustling and then a _thunk_ of something falling to the floor. 

“Are you okay?” Callum calls through the door. 

“I’m… fine! I’m fine, open it,” the response comes, muted through the panel of wood.

He does, and she isn’t. There are dark circles under her eyes, and her hair is wild, tangled around her horns. 

“Rayla--”

“Shu’ up.”

“No, hey--You can’t do this,” Callum says. “Why didn’t you _say_ something? I could have come and waited with you for the letter.”

“You were busy,” she justifies. “Ezran needs you. Other people need you. I can’t just hang off your arm all the time, can I?”

“I mean, you can if you want to,'' he says with a weak half-smile and a shrug. “Is this a hugging thing or a space thing?”

“Hugging,” she says with a bit of reluctance, her voice small like her nod, and he encloses her in his arms (and granted, she’s still a little taller than he is, but he does his best.)

Part of him is almost _guilty_ about how glad he is that his first girlfriend is literally a whole different species. 

Not too long ago, he started probing for information from older boys -- from Soren, from guard trainees, from some of the castle staff -- about how to _be good with girls._ They all seemed to have basically the same advice: you can’t _ask_ them what they want, you have to just know and do it. If you ask, they say, it doesn’t count. 

When he heard that, he practically gave up on the whole idea altogether, that’s how impossible it seemed. Being considerate is one thing, but how is anyone supposed to _just know?_ He thought he’d do his best to just be _nice,_ the way his mom always taught him, but then the older boys said that was no good either. _Girls don’t like nice guys,_ they would say, which just seemed ridiculous. Who doesn't like nice people? They gave him lines he could say, things girls supposedly liked, but they all felt wrong in his mouth.

With Rayla, he has a _built-in excuse_ to need more information, to ask how she wants things and do them that way. She doesn’t know or care what human girls might have expected of him. She has her own expectations, and he gets to find out what those are. Sure, when it comes down to it they’re really far more similar than they are different, but still -- it’s just enough he doesn’t have to feel bad about himself for not always having the answer, for having to check in, for not struggling into a pre-written role that just doesn’t fit him. 

With Rayla, there’s no script to follow. They’re making it up as they go, and they get to choose how they want to be. 

When they pull apart, he says, “I haven’t read it yet. Do you want me to read it first and tell you about it, or do you want to read it together? Or--you can read it first, if you want.”

She reaches for his hand and takes a deep breath. “Let’s just read it together.”

Callum perches on the foot of the bed, and Rayla sits beside him, tilting into the divot he makes in the mattress so she leans warm against him. For the second time recently, he unrolls a letter with a hesitation that seems to suggest he’s worried it will catch fire. 

_Dear Rayla and Callum,_

_It was quite lovely to greet your crow! I haven’t received a real letter in a very long time. I only wish the circumstance was better. Sorry about not staying longer. I was a little moonsick. Get it? Like homesick, but for the Moon Nexus. Haha!_

_I discussed the horrible situation with Luna Tenebris, about the dark magic coins. Truly the stuff of nightmares. Reading it, I cannot believe I permitted a dark mage to stay here for even a moment -- clearly their treachery runs deeper than I could have guessed._

_Unfortunately, and as much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news: Lain, Tiadrin, and Runaan have indeed been imprisoned within the coins. Their spirits live within, frozen in the final moments of transfer. We determined that if they were to be released during the full moon in an area with significant Primal energy, their physical forms would be restored. However, this must not happen. I_ _t was dark magic that did this, and despite all of our search for a workaround, it seems that only a direct (dark magic) reversal would work. Naturally, dark magic cannot be permitted, even in such circumstances as these. Two wrongs do not make a right. My second husband used to say that to me rather often..._

 _Luna Tenebris also visited Queen Zubeia, and the Silvergrove. She wanted to say this: that all three of these elves were true heroes. She has no doubt in her mind that such good and pure souls would prefer to be martyred for their cause than to be rescued by evil._ _In light of this, she has altered by magic a pool of Moon Nexus water in the Silvergrove -- when placed into the water, an illusion will permeate the world of the coins, and the souls inside will be put to sleep. While they cannot be freed, at the very least their torment and misery can end._

_Rayla: Luna Tenebris also wishes to personally (Draconically?) apologize for your ghosting ever having happened. She has undone it herself, completely and totally. You will receive a hero’s welcome in the Silvergrove._

_She advises (or possibly demands, it's a bit hard to tell with her sometimes) that you return home with the coins, and a ceremony will be held to lay Lain, Tiadrin, and Runaan to their permanent rest in the water. It is the best we can do for them now. We at the Moon Nexus are sorry for your loss._

Next to him, Rayla takes another long, deep inhale, and lets it out. Callum wraps one arm around her shoulder and pulls her in closer, so that she can rest her head against him. (He’s learning to be careful about horn positioning, so as not to put an eye out.) 

“I am so sorry,” he says softly, the only thing he can think to say. 

She nods against his shoulder, and he realizes from a small movement and a gasp that she’s crying. 

He offers her a handkerchief the tailor put in the pocket of his new jacket, and holds her closer. 

With the curtains drawn, it’s hard to guess exactly how long they stay that way, before he decides to ask: "Do you want to talk about it?"

She shakes her head, but says, "I wish I hadn't picked the stupid things up at all. It was easier thinking they'd just died."

Callu nods. “When are you going to set out?”

“Right away, I figure,” she says with a sniffle. “I could go tonight.”

“Rayla…” Callum doesn’t know how to ask, but he has to, so he just does. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“I can’t ask that. There’s so much happening here, I can’t ask you to leave.”

“That’s not what I asked,” he says, gentle but firm. “I asked if you _wanted_ me to. If you want to go alone, that’s fine, just say so, but if you want me to come with you, then I want to.”

She takes a little while to answer, and he gives her the time. Eventually, she says, “Callum... I _do_ want you to, but only if it’s _really_ alright.”

He puts his hand on her shoulder, and moves them apart so he can look her in the face. “It’s really alright. And hey, if I needed to come back in a hurry, just think how much easier it is now that there’s no sneaking around.”

Rayla nods. “Right. And… I can show you around properly this time.” 

“Right!” Callum says, echoing the hint of good cheer that the idea seems to nurture in her. She’s been a good sport in a strange land, he can certainly do the same. “But uh… can we start tomorrow? Not tonight?”

“Tired?” Rayla asks. 

“I just have some… things I have to do, to get ready.” There’s Ezran, he’s worried about that situation to be sure, but Narampu and Ylai will surely have things under control, right? And he doesn’t even think he’ll be gone that long. And besides that, he reminds himself again: dad’s rooms are the safest in the whole castle. It’ll be fine.

“Fine. Tomorrow, then.”

“I’ll meet you at the bridge gate, after breakfast. Is that okay?” She nods, and he adds, “And Rayla…”

“Yes?”

“I love you."

“Why’re you sayin’ _that_ all of a sudden?” She blushes, a thing he thinks he might never get tired of.

“Because I do, and this whole situation sucks. Doesn’t everybody like to know they’re loved, when things are tough?”

“Oh,” she says, as though the notion hadn’t occurred to her. “I guess it's not so bad, yeah. Well, I… love you too, anyway.”

She leans in, and he catches her kiss goodnight. 

The giddy little rush that comes along with it hasn’t faded in the least, even if he _has_ kissed her a number of times now, and even if the situation is less than ideal. While it’s far from a major reason to accompany her, he’s a little selfishly glad that he won’t have to be deprived -- he’s just gone from having never kissed anyone to this new state of affairs, and he isn’t exactly in a hurry to give it up. 

It’s this that he is still thinking of, even as he jogs through the corridors and down the parapet walk, and back into Lord Viren’s rooms, torch in hand.

Sure, the plan is set: to put Rayla’s parents and Runaan to rest in the enchanted water.

It’s set, it’s decided.

But still, it needles at him: what if it was a _really_ simple spell, to undo the trap? What if it was easy, and at least kind of safe? What if it didn’t cost very much at all? What if what they’re really doing is letting three good people die -- or basically die, anyway -- over something that might not be much different than accidentally stepping on a lizard?

It just doesn’t sit right. 

If he could free them, if he could put things right without causing too much trouble, wouldn’t that be better? 

Maybe he’ll find out the spell to release them is something cruel or dangerous, and if that’s the case, he swears to himself he’ll leave it completely alone, and maybe it’ll be easy and he’ll still leave it alone anyway, on gut instinct, but his mom used to tell him that no one really knows how they’ll react to something until they’re in it. So he has to be in it, to make up his mind.

As much as the whole idea of ever doing dark magic again chills his blood, as frightened as he is about the pain, the sickness, the danger, he imagines again what it would be like if it were his own parents. He’d make the sacrifice for them in a heartbeat. 

If he rescued Runaan, maybe that would even help prove to him that humans aren’t all bad.

Anyway, there’s no commitment in just doing a little reading and finding out what it would take. Always better to learn something than not, isn't it?

There’s no harm in knowing. 

* * *

For the first two days of travel, Sigrin makes excellent time, despite the difficult weather conditions and the state of the road, but all it takes is one push forward at the wrong time on a difficult shortcut, and her entire plan dissolves faster than thread-candy dropped into hot tea. 

It all seems to happen in almost slow motion: A young silver-eyed fox darts out from cover with a strangled yelp, crossing the path like a bolt of lightning. Nir, the gray saddlebred horse that had got her this far, startles and leaps to the side. Sigrin can handle this -- even the slight bucking is under control -- until the last foot hits the ground wrong. 

Maybe there was a rock, maybe it was just Nir’s mistake, maybe it was something in how Sigrin adjusted herself to compensate for the leap, it doesn’t matter. The result is the same: a horrifying, sickening _crack_ as the bones in the horse’s leg shatter.

Sigrin is too tired and too stiff to leap out of the saddle in time, but she does her best. Still, the two of them go tumbling off the narrow path together. She goes slack for the fall down the slope to minimize her injuries, ragdolling to an eventual stop not much further down from where Nir ends up. At the end of it, she’s scraped and bruised and covered in dirt, but not badly harmed.

That is, unlike Nir. 

There’s nothing for it. One look tells her that the first break alone was too much to ever truly heal, and the fall after that only made things ten times worse. The horse’s eyes are wild and her nostrils twitch and flare with every short, strained breath. Sigrin kneels next to her in the dirt. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, petting the side of Nir’s face. She feels like she should cry, Nir deserves it, but the tears just aren’t there. She’s too “I’m really, really sorry. You’ve been so good, and so strong. It’s not fair at all. Thank you, for everything.”

Her fingers dip into a pouch on her belt. From inside, she draws a desiccated gray lump with something white and stringy wrapped around it: a moment mummified, in which a tideworm invaded a piece of a fish’s brain. She crushes it in her hand and turns it to dust, which she blows across Nir’s face, an incantation lighting up her eyes. 

“Goodbye, dear Nir.”

Nir struggles for a moment, and is then at peace. 

Sigrin had brought that particular rare component along with her because she’d thought it might become necessary to use it on herself -- to escape a worse death -- but she supposes that’s not an option anymore. 

Still, she doesn’t regret easing Nir’s passing, though she does also think it a pity that Nir herself has always been about as un-magical as an animal can get. If she’d had even a trace of Primal energy, her heart, her liver, her eyes… all could have been useful for something. As it is, all that can be done is to consolidate the luggage and descend into the valley. 

The capital city of Del Bar is below her, only a few hours walk away. In Delhem, she can resupply, get a stronger traveling bag, and figure out her next steps -- maybe even get a new horse, depending on how the prices are these days. 

A pine needle enchanted to act as a compass guides her East down the mountainside until she’s nearly there. She can see the homes and shops on the outskirts of the city when it happens:

A dark shadow passes overhead. 

At first it seems like it should have been a stormcloud, but it moves too fast. Sigrin knows before she looks up that she is going to see a thing she has never once in her life seen outside of diagrams and paintings: a dragon. When she _does_ look, she indeed sees _three_ dragons, black shapes against the cloud-bleached sky. 

Never once in all her days or the days of her mother has a dragon come to Del Bar, let alone a trio.

Something has changed.

Two of them circle over the city, the largest one landing somewhere within. (The city square, she thinks, is probably the only area with sufficient space, but who knows if the damn thing didn’t just crush some houses instead of bothering with it. It's the kind of thing she's always imagined dragons might do.)

She picks up the pace.

* * *

In the silence of the dusk, Aaravos says something, so deep and quiet it’s hard to make out his words. Claudia is certain that both he and her father believe her to be asleep, so she can’t exactly ask for clarification.

The three of them settled in to stay under cover before dawn broke and _went to sleep_ (allegedly) around mid-morning. The most difficult part of nocturnal travel has been sleep: mainly, shutting out the light without inviting danger, a thing generally accomplished by intermittent broken naps. It isn’t an official _sleeping-in-shifts_ situation, but it’s trending in that direction, without discussion. 

Or at least, it is as far as she and dad are concerned. Aaravos continues to act like a barn cat, doing as he pleases. She’s beginning to see her dad’s point of view on it, though -- for as annoying as he is, he hasn’t done anything really stupid. He’s sure to be inside the concealment in the daytime and he seems adept with his stolen dagger.

And he _is_ useful, much as she dislikes admitting it to herself. 

This deep in Xadia, there’s flora and fauna beyond even her father’s knowledge, let alone her own, and Aaravos seems to know which ones you can eat and which ones will hurt to touch and which ones are linked to what energy. He knows when the weather is about to change before anyone else does, though whether he mentions it or just lets them get soaked for his own petty amusement (or forgets to say, she supposes that’s possible too) is only as predictable as a coin toss.

He knows other things, too. 

_Did you really believe that the land was split only physically?_ The laughter that followed his words echoes around her skull. She can’t stop thinking about it. All forms of Primal energy, Aaravos told them, flow, in a general sense from East to West, like an invisible river. _This was common knowledge, once,_ he pointed out, nauseatingly haughty.

It doesn't matter. It's not as if humans can be at fault for not knowing something when the dragons burned the libraries where that knowledge was held.

Somehow it feels so much worse, so much more bitter, knowing that the border with Xadia isn’t only a river of lava, but an enormous invisible dam that pinches the flow of Primal energy to a trickle, that had the energy flowed in the opposite direction, humans would simply have been left an artificially-dried up East instead. 

Her conception of Xadians as _hoarding_ seems more on-the-nose than ever. 

It is her (unspoken) turn to rest, but while she did fall asleep briefly, the anger and strangeness of it all keeps her too alert. She tries -- lying still with the hood of her cloak over her eyes to block the sun, breathing slowly, pretending to sleep as a way of inviting the real thing to come back. 

Making it even harder are the dreams she’s been having -- vivid, and unsettling. 

If she falls asleep again, will she go back to the place she’s been seeing? And does she want to? Is this the kind of thing she should say something about? Maybe she can casually bring it up later.

At any rate, she must be doing a fairly convincing impression of unbroken rest.

“I don’t think that’s wise,” she hears her father half-whisper his answer, clearly intended not to disturb her. “And anyway, to what purpose?”

More rumbling from Aaravos.

“Yes, and no. It’s complicated. Is it really that unbearable?”

Aaravos says something about _before_ and _reversed._

“Before, I had no choice.” Dad sounds like he’s speaking through his teeth.

“Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it. How would _you_ feel, in my position?” Aaravos speaks just a tiny bit louder, his words easier to discern now. What is he trying to do? Claudia tenses, focused on not missing anything further of the conversation.

“I…” A sigh. “I would hate it, I’m sure. Obviously. Have you tried eating? Sleeping? Would that make a difference? It might mean less energy on maintenance.”

“It might mean this takes _seven_ centuries instead of _eight._ Even _dark magic_ is lost to me as long as my spirit is bound to its prison.” Now Aaravos sounds like an angry, _impatient_ barn cat. “I might as well be a corpse.”

“Why _couldn’t_ an empty shell, sufficiently animated, do dark magic?” Viren’s tone makes an immediate shift to academic curiosity. “Theoretically, I don’t see any reason--”

“ _I don’t know._ It isn’t a question I’ve ever had to _ask_. But believe me, _I have tried._ ” Aaravos’ voice softens slightly when he changes the topic: “Do you recall anything, from when you were dead?”

“I don’t know _why_ that question feels rude, but it does,” Viren answers. It _does_ , too. _Claudia_ hasn’t even asked, though she’s curious. 

“But _do_ you?”

“No.” It is impossible to tell if he’s lying.

_“Nothing?”_

_“Why?”_ Her father is losing his patience. Even if she couldn’t hear it, she thinks she could feel the fog of it, familiar as anything. She’s been the cause of it often enough.

“Nevermind,” Aaravos says, probably wisely. “So?”

“Fine,” he relents, apparently agreeing to whatever it was Aaravos wanted. 

There’s some shifting about after that, as if they’re getting up to step away from the campsite. Whatever it is, Claudia has a sense that she wants to stop it before it starts, so she stirs and makes a small sound, as if just waking, before sitting up. 

Both of them freeze. She can’t reveal how alert she already is, so she isn’t able to get any sign of what was about to happen. The eclipse staff is close at her father’s side, but that isn’t an indication of much, he’s been carrying it while they travel as much as a walking stick as an aid to magic.

“Claudia. You’re… awake,” Viren says. “Good.”

“Dad?” She tries to sound sleepy and lets her hair fall in her face to complete the illusion. Back in the cave she implored him to let her in, to be honest with her. That means she has to do the same thing, right? Even if it sounds stupid? Might as well get it over with. Better to do it when he thinks she's just woken up, instead of out of the blue. “I should probably tell you I’m having weird dreams.”

“I…” He glances between her and Aaravos, who shrugs very slightly. “You’re sleeping outdoors, in the daytime, eating unusual food. It would be more surprising if you _weren’t_ having unusual dreams. Why do you bring it up?”

“It’s the fourth time in a row, the same dream,” she says, because the first three times she was willing to brush it off, but _four_ is somehow intolerable.

The little she can remember, she describes -- it is so clear when she is dreaming it, but only fragments are left when she wakes: Shades of colored light, the feeling of fleeing and hiding and finding a safe place. The sense of crossing a rocking bridge, of drinking something cold and viscous, of eating a round fruit that tastes like smoke. Most of all, the humming sound that is distant in her waking life is all around her when she sleeps. 

It comes out even more incoherent than it was in her head, and she half-expects he’ll dismiss it as nothing, give her a weird look for bringing it up, and move on. 

She does _not_ expect him to recoil and say that he’s been dreaming the exact same thing.

* * *

“Will you take a crow with you?” Ezran asks, standing in the entry hall to see Callum off. At his feet on the long carpet runner is a black bird in a cage, feathers ruffled. “Then if you get into trouble, you can send it back and someone can go out there and help you.”

“I don’t know,” Callum says, skeptical, imagining the work of having to take care of it. “I’m already bringing all these books with me. I don’t think I can carry a cage on top of all that. We’re just going on foot.”

“You won’t have to! I’ll talk to her for you, explain the situation.”

Callum laughs out loud, not in disbelief anymore, but at how odd and fantastical it still sounds that that’s even possible. “Alright then,” he invites. 

Ezran crouches next to the cage and puts his hand through the open door. After a moment, he looks up at Callum. “She wants to know what’s in it for her.”

“What’s--uh, I don’t know, what does she want?” Callum asks. 

“Peanuts,” Ezran interprets. “She wants peanuts in the shell, every morning and every night, and if you do that she’ll follow you on her own without you having to carry her.” He turns to the bird and says, “I’m sorry you haven’t had peanuts in awhile. I’ll tell the Crow Master you miss them.”

“Peanuts,” Callum repeats. “That’s not too hard, right? Fine then, I can agree to that. Uh, what should I call her?”

“Uh…” Ezran frowns at the bird. “We definitely can’t pronounce that. How about Deem, for short?” He stands up and addresses Callum: “Deem is fine with her.”

Deem hops out of the open cage door, and Callum struggles not to flinch when she comes right at him. The landing on his shoulder is perfect, no matter how clumsy it seemed like it’d be, but then she launches off of there (digging her claws into his shoulder) and soars right through the archway that leads out of the castle. 

“Don’t worry,” assures Ezran. “She’ll keep an eye on you. She likes you! I wonder if it’s ‘cause of the Sky Primal thing?”

Callum hadn’t thought of that before. 

He gives Ezran a big hug, glances over Narampu and Ylai one more time with an assessing eye (as if it would make any difference) and gives a wave before turning to leave. 

At the bridge, Rayla is waiting for him, and even at a distance he can tell she’s tense -- can’t really blame her for that. 

“Oh, you finally made it,” she teases. “What’s all that then, you look like you’ve packed the whole castle.”

He shifts his bag uncomfortably. “Just books.”

“I’m _that_ borin’ then?” She laughs, which after last night, is good to hear.

“What? No! I just… wanted some stuff to read, is all.” He isn’t trying to _hide_ what he’s doing, he tells himself -- there’s nothing wrong, so there’s nothing to hide, he’s just not ready to explain it all yet. Better to wait until he’s got a whole, clear picture to paint.

“Well alright,” Rayla eyes him with unmistakable wariness. “You’re the one that’s gotta carry ‘em I suppose. Let’s go.”

He follows her out from under the shadow of the gate, onto the sun-flooded road beyond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know you've really gone off the deep end when you're referencing the lost colony of Roanoke in a fanfiction.


	5. Book Four: Earth | Chapter Five: Compost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Don’t judge me. Ethics and morality no longer exist in our world. It’s a luxury of the past, afforded only to those who had a future._   
>  **—T.M. Williams**

**Book Four: Earth**

**Chapter 5: Compost**

“Oh thank goodness you’re here.”

Sigrin is used to hearing that, but not like this. For one thing, usually  _ they’re  _ visiting  _ her,  _ not the other way around. The guard has his hands on her feather-trimmed shoulders. She’s not a fan of that, but it isn’t a rough or demanding sort of touch. No, it is urgent, frightened, the touch of a harried mother leading a hired mage to a fever-stricken child. 

Only  _ this _ harried mother is a portly middle-aged man in armor and helmet.

“I’m sorry,  _ who _ exactly do you think I am?” Sigrin asks, but does not pull away. Her curiosity is greater than her fear or annoyance by several orders of magnitude, no matter often this gets her into trouble.

“You’re a mage, I can tell that by the look of you easy enough,” he says, which is fair. Not only does she do nothing to conceal her profession, but she knowingly styles herself in a way that could perhaps be called  _ stereotypical  _ for a woodsmage. There’s something to be said for looking the part, in her line of work -- inspires confidence.

“Doesn’t Queen Gunhild  _ have  _ a high mage? And a couple of apprentices, if I recall correctly?” Sigrin is certain there’s nothing she can do that they can’t, at least not without considerable preparation and discussion. He hurries her along through a series of archways carved into the mountainside. “What is it you think  _ I _ can do?”

“The high mage is dead and his apprentices have fled the city.”

Ah. “Okay, my question stands.”

“I don’t know _ what  _ you can do, but I know the queen put out a standing order to bring any mage to her, on sight.”

“Is this the part where I ask how the _ last _ mage died?” The hallways around them go from rough to manicured, and then to carpeted, plastered, and adorned with frescoes. They’re getting closer to the throne.

“The dragon,” says the guard, predictably.

They turn a corner and pass through a set of enormous double-doors. On a hewn-stone throne under a soaring ceiling spider-webbed with exposed beams, Queen Gunhild sits in beat-to-hell armor, wisps of white-blonde hair sticking out from beneath her helmet, and her fingers are curled tight around the shaft of a spear. 

“Mage!” Calls the queen. She takes one look at Sigrin and laughs, not mocking, but victorious and perhaps just a little mad. “I see fortune has not wholly abandoned me! Timne, you brought me a mage. Remind me of that if we survive the day, and you’ll be promoted. Dismissed.”

The guard is out of the room like a shot. 

“You don’t think we’re  _ going _ to survive the day,” Sigrin guesses, appending a hasty, “Your highness.”

“No, I don’t.”

The floor shakes beneath them and then goes still. Is that what an earthquake feels like? She’s read of them in books, but never experienced such a thing. “So what am I here for?”

“Your face is familiar but forgive me, I don’t remember your name.” asks the queen. 

“Sigrin,” is all she supplies, and then, as queen continues visibly struggling to recall, she makes the most likely connection for her: “I am...was… married to Viren, of Katolis. It has come to my attention that he has died.”

“Ah, yes, now I remember you! My husband found you quite amusing. Lord Ehnia didn’t like you very much, but he’s dead too, so it hardly matters, does it? Seems the men have left us with quite a mess to clean up, haven’t they? As always.”

“Ma’am, according to your guard, Lord Ehnia’s apprentices have fled. If your goal was to survive, you would have done the same, so I presume we have a different objective than keeping you alive. You’ll have to tell me what that  _ is _ if you want my help.”

“Indeed!” Gunhild flashes a grin. “What kind of queen would that make me, if I survived? King Harrow was the same. He knew a captain goes down with their ship. Your fellow too, by the sounds of it. Perhaps I will meet them both alongside my own husband in the warrior’s banquet after I pass. If only such honor existed in Xadia, we might be able to negotiate with the bastards.”

“The ship _ is _ going down, then?” She cuts to the point, arms folded in front of her. This isn’t what she’d been planning, but it also isn’t as if her plan was all that firm to begin with. She can be flexible. 

“Mage Sigrin,” Gunhild steps down off her dais. “Lord Viren had a good head on his shoulders.”

“At times.” 

“He knew better than to play around with Xadia. I advised that Florian take him more seriously, but he didn’t listen to me, and now look. Kings dead, dragons at the door. Well,  _ A  _ dragon, at any rate. Not sure where the other two went. The soldiers who lived to tell of the battle at the spire say your husband made them fireproof. I don’t suppose you’ve got anything like that up your billowing sleeve?”

“If he did that, I haven’t the faintest idea how.” Sigrin says honestly. She can’t help a moment to puzzle over it. It would be a use of the Sun Primal, but what could he have sublimated that would possibly have that much power? She can’t even begin to speculate. Even a primal stone would need considerable amplification, and trying to picture how you’d get a primal stone to do  _ that  _ even to  _ one  _ human makes her head hurt. 

One thing is certain: he couldn’t have been acting alone.  _ No one _ could do that by themselves. So who was on his side?

“Pity,” says the queen. “When you said you were his wife, I hoped… oh well. At any rate, as I said. Dragons. They want Del Bar, I’m not giving it to them, they’re not thrilled. Who’d have guessed? Live under dragon rule, or die free, that’s the ultimatum. Guess they thought the trade cutoff with Duren wouldn’t starve us quickly enough for their tastes, unlike with Neolandia. There’s already wagons and carts and horses on the road to Katolis now. Women and children, mostly.”

“And we?”

“Distract them.”

_ “From?” _

“From all the spies, apprentices, kitchen mages, and youths with rebellious spirits embedded in the caravans headed out of here,” says Gunhild, standing close, with the expression and demeanor of a cat backed into a corner. Even if such a creature cannot win a fight, it might lash out with a filthy claw, so that the attacker succumbs to fever long after the cat has perished. “Del Bar isn’t merely a  _ place,  _ Mage Sigrin. You may not be able to make our bodies fireproof, but our spirits always have been.”

Wait.

“It doesn’t matter whether I agree or not, does it?” Sigrin realizes all at once, out loud. “I must be a  _ beacon _ of magic and death, drowning out every one of those students and farmer’s wives. That dragon can probably smell me right through these walls. If I wanted to join the refugees, I’d just bring them down on whoever was near me. This isn’t even a real question. If I try to leave, you’ll kill me rather than let that happen.”

“I do hope it won’t come to that,” says the queen. “Between the two of us, we would make an  _ excellent  _ distraction. We’d keep them far busier than I could ever do alone.”

She’s pictured this in her mind often enough. Not this exactly, but dying in a general sense. It’s a tendency that she and Viren bonded over, once upon a time. They agreed that if the stories of ghosts and spirits were true, if there was an afterlife that included the world around them, there was a place that they would go to wait for one another. 

Will their souls remember where to meet?

“It won’t,” Sigrin says. Duty calls, and with it death. She can’t ignore one to avoid the other -- she and the obviously half-suicidal queen seem to have that much in common. “It won’t come to that.”

“Good, then,” Gunhild answers. “Let’s fight a dragon, shall we?”

* * *

Soren has questions.

“Thank you as always,  _ Deputies, _ ” Opeli says as she gathers her things, leaning playfully on the last word with a smile. “I think the three of us make an excellent team, don’t you?”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Corvus answers from somewhere near the door.

Soren is only half-listening, still going around the edges of what he’s calling  _ the  _ _red-chamber_ , dousing one by one the torches that lit up Opeli’s first trial ceremony. With each extinguished flame comes a rush of air through the adjacent window, cool by comparison, especially when it touches the sweat on his brow. It isn’t as if it’s hard work, it’s only the fire and the layers. He’s looking forward to doing this in winter instead.

At least, insofar as he’s looking forward to it at all. 

It would be fair to say that Soren’s been a little distracted pretty much since the midpoint of the proceedings. 

Once the final torch is out, he gives a look over the darkened room to make sure everything is in order. Last through the door, he locks it behind him with a key that feels as heavy in his hand as a sword.

“It’s a beautiful night,” Corvus remarks, hands in his pockets, as they pass through the arched doorway at the bottom of the stairs and into the courtyard. “I know that sedition isn’t anything to celebrate, but that  _ was  _ our first day of a new job, in a manner of speaking. What say we have a drink? The Sunfire elves brought a whole case of that fancy wine of theirs, I’d say we’ve earned it. Think of it as… team-building.”

“A little certainly can’t hurt,” admits Opeli, eyes sparkling at Corvus. “Soren? What do you think?”

In his mind, Soren plans to answer, but he must spend more time weighing his thoughts than he realizes.

“Soren? Everything okay?” Corvus asks. 

“Uh… yeah. It’s fine. I just…” He stammers, suddenly unsure if he should say anything at all.

Opeli briefly rests a hand on his spaulder. “If something’s wrong, you can tell us. We’re a team, we should be there for each other.”

_ You can tell us.  _

Can he, though? Maybe. Maybe she’s right, and there’s nothing to worry about. Things are different now -- happily ever after, or whatever. 

“It just seems a little rough, doesn’t it?” Soren finally blurts out, nervously running a hand through his hair. “I mean, the way it was, with the… trial and everything.” 

“I’ve got this one. You go get the wine, we’ll be out here,” Opeli says to Corvus, who nods, crosses the courtyard, and vanishes through a door. When they’re alone, she sits on a wooden bench along the wall and pats the other side. “Come sit. I understand why you’d have questions. I’m _ glad _ you spoke up.”

“You… are?” He follows the direction to sit beside her. 

“Of course. I don’t want you to have any doubts about what we’re doing -- and if it’s not something you’re comfortable with, I’ll be happy to talk to the queen regent and we can find another post for you.”

“Wow,” Soren says, a little agog at that kind of flexibility. “I mean… no, I’m fine, it’s just… that’s nice of you. I just kind of felt bad for them, you know? The lady only did a  _ little  _ dark magic, because of the kid’s condition, and now she’s being taken away from her family.”

Opeli nods. What she says next is not an argument, but a statement of sad-but-immutable fact, like a doctor giving bad news to a patient. “She couldn’t agree to stop.”

“Still, I wish there was a better way,” Soren admits.

“Soren, do you remember… several years ago, right here in this courtyard, when you saved Prince Ezran?”

He has to think a second. “The thing with the cart?”

“Yes! He had to be what, three or four years old? And he was playing, and ran right in front of a merchant cart on the way into the courtyard. He would have been trampled if you hadn’t jumped in there and got him out of the way--” Opeli laughs at this part, “Remember how he went flying, head over heels, right into the flowerbed?”

Soren laughs too. “Yeah… I was sure I’d messed up. I thought I’d get in trouble. Especially the way he was crying and grass stained and saying how mean I was...”

“But you didn’t,” she points out. “Because you did the right thing. Imagine if you’d just said,  _ Prince Ezran, please don’t play there.  _ He wouldn’t have heard you, or listened. It would have been a tragedy. You were rough and mean and you  _ ruined  _ his afternoon and his clothes, but you saved his life.”

Across the courtyard, Corvus pushes open a door and waves a bottle of solar wine at them as he approaches. 

“So you’re saying this is like that?” Soren checks. “We’re saving them?”

“Exactly. Little Ezran didn’t know he was in danger, he thought he was just having fun, so he  _ hated _ , because he didn’t understand. Now, if he remembers that at all, I’m sure he’s grateful.”

“You think they’ll be grateful too, someday?” Soren asks. 

“I’m sure of it.”

“Alright, scoot over, scoot over,” Corvus says, leading Soren to shift so that Opeli can take up the middle of the bench, and Corvus the far end. If Opeli and Corvus are pressed against each other a little more than they need to be, Soren can pretend he doesn’t notice. From that spot, Corvus passes a short wooden cup to each of them, and pours the wine. It isn’t fancy, but maybe it’s better that way -- it suits an atmosphere of camaraderie more than one of celebration.

“Opeli?” Soren asks. “I just realized I never even asked where they go. I mean, I know we’re not throwing them in the dungeon or anything, but--”

“Curiosity runs your family, doesn’t it?” Opeli says with a friendly nudge. “Earthblood and Sunfire elves are building a place, by the border. Think of it like a boarding school.”

Soren’s sure she didn’t mean it  _ that way _ , but he feels a little chastised by the comparison. He moves on so as not to draw attention to it. “So they’re there to learn?” 

_ “Exactly,” _ Corvus jumps in. “And if they catch on and make good use of their time… then they get to come home and live in this new world we’re all making together.”

“Well that doesn’t sound so bad,” Soren nods. 

After Opeli’s comment before, he doesn’t want to admit that he was thinking of Claudia when he asked the question. If she’s alive, if she’s out there, if she comes home… it’s a lot of  _ ifs,  _ but  _ if  _ they ever came true, he imagines he could make a case for her to be saved, too. 

He doesn’t even want to consider the alternative. 

“How about a toast?” Opeli suggests, raising her glass. “To finding the lost, and rescuing the wayward.”

They tap their cups together, and drink. The heat of the wine prickles down Soren’s throat and seeps into his skin like a sweeter, softer version of the little fires in the red-chamber. A half a cup seems to massage some of the tension from his muscles. 

Finding the lost, rescuing the wayward. It sounds like what heroes do. He just hopes that’s actually what they’re doing. Everything Opeli and Corvus are saying makes perfect sense -- so why does something still feel  _ off  _ about it? 

If he wants to earn trust, he has to give it, right? And moreover, if he wants to earn  _ not reminding people of dad,  _ he has to give that too, instead of jumping to bad conclusions. If he’s getting that weird, back-foot feeling he used to get talking to his father, he has to trust that it’s just his own damage, his own lingering paranoia whispering nonsense at him. Anyway, even if he thought he had the right or the clout to ask more questions, he doesn’t even know where he’d start. 

It’s just a feeling, he can’t even clearly put it in words, at least not yet.

It’s probably nothing real.

He takes a second, longer sip of the wine, nearly draining his cup and prompting a refill from Corvus. The taste is strong enough to quiet his mind for a moment. 

“Man, this stuff is good,” Soren says, looking into his reflection in the dark surface of the liquid. He gets a chuckle from both Opeli and Corvus when he admits, “You know I never thought I would like wine. I figured it was just something I had to drink sometimes, to be a grown-up. There’s more where this came from?”

“Of course!” Corvus says. “In the kitchens. Just look for the crates with the Sun Primal symbol branded on them. But you know, if you  _ didn’t  _ like it, that wouldn’t say anything about you. There’s more than one way to be grown-up.”

“Maybe when people come back from the boarding school place, we can have a kind of ceremony thing for that, too,” Soren suggests, tapping the side of his cup thoughtfully. “And we can serve this, to celebrate that they’re ready to live together with elves and all. Like a welcome home party!”

A strange look flickers across Opeli’s face, something Soren can’t interpret, but it’s quickly swept away by a smile. “That’s a great idea. I’ll start writing a ceremony script for it tonight.”

When the bottle is finished, Opeli and Corvus both move to go inside. Judging by the sky, it’s gotten late. He says goodnight, but decides to stay outside in the soothing night breeze a little longer, and when he’s alone, he stretches out on the bench to watch the stars wheel slowly overhead. 

At some point, he must fall asleep, because while he doesn’t remember drifting off, all of the sudden he’s waking up groggy and a little chilled in the misty early dawn to the gentle  _ tock-tock-tock _ of horseshoes on stone.

“Is that Soren?” That’s Gren’s voice. “What’s he doing out here?”

“Huh? Yep, that’s me, I’m Soren,” he says, getting up a little blearily. Waiting at the front gate of the courtyard for the guards to open the door are ten horses, carrying Janai, Amaya, and Gren as well as a team of five soldiers and two horses with no riders, only luggage. “What… what’s happening?”

“You okay? I wanted to tell you at dinner last night, but I couldn’t find you,” Amaya says through Gren, legs tight around her horse’s sides to make it easier to sign in the saddle.

Soren explains, “I was helping Opeli… and then it was nice out, so I stayed outside.”

“All night?”

“I guess so.” Soren glances back at his bench with a rueful thought for the crick in his neck.

“Anyway, we’re leaving.”

“You’re… what?! Why? Is something wrong?”

“We’re going to Lux Aurea,” Janai says, sounding a tad defensive. Soren flinches, not having meant to offend, he was just surprised. 

Amaya slides smoothly off her horse, and Gren follows suit, but Janai stays right where she is. 

“I know it’s strange,” Amaya says. Her face is one of laughter when she adds, “I just got home, and now I have to go again. I don’t really feel like much of a diplomat, but I’m apparently the  _ least worst option _ . Gren, tell him what we talked about, he’ll love it.”

Gren adds, his own voice sounding different when isn’t interpreting, though he signs while he speaks, “We have an existing agreement that I should do a  _ modest _ amount of censoring in certain situations, the way Queen Sarai apparently used to do--

Amaya waves, and he interprets her cut-in: “--Because if I’m going to be mute to begin with, I might as well get to swear at people right in front of them when they deserve it--”

For himself, Gren finishes: “I’m now meant to, as General Amaya put it,  _ take that up several notches,  _ for the sake of avoiding an international incident.”

Soren  _ does  _ laugh at that. 

Janai adds, from horseback, “The people of Lux Aurea know her face. They know she passed my sister’s test, they know she saved my life twice, and they know she is straightforward and honorable. They care more about that than they do about politics and statecraft.”

“And hey,” Amaya adds to that, “Maybe I can make friends with one of those big flying cat things, then I can come back more often!”

“It just kinda sucks,” Soren says frankly. “I mean, Callum left to go to Rayla’s hometown, Ezran’s always busy with studying elf history and stuff -- and his new crownguard are nice, but he never seems to get any privacy, so I can’t really hang out with him one on one -- and now you’re leaving too.”

“You gonna get lonely?” Amaya teases.

Soren meets her joke with an honesty that seems to leap off his tongue unbidden. “Kind of? All those reasons you’re gonna be great in Lux Aurea are the same reasons you’ve been such a huge help, and, thanks, but I still keep feeling like I don’t know what’s right. I just wish I could stop second-guessing myself.”

With frankly impressive speed, Amaya yanks Soren into an armor-clattering hug so tight his ribs feel bruised at the end of it. 

He does his best to give as good as he gets. 

When she pulls away, she punches him in the shoulder and then says, with movements big and expressive, “I have faith in you. Follow your gut.”

Amaya and Gren get back into the saddle. The doors open for them, and in the space of just a few moments, the whole little troop is gone into the world. 

* * *

In the end, the three of them concealed themselves _too well,_ it seems, because the two Sunfire elves practically stumble right through their campsite. One look at Claudia, Viren, and the eclipse staff is enough to give them all the information they need. 

The long-haired one moves fast enough to get a still-less-than-optimally agile (and still magically impotent) Aaravos in a hold, blade at his neck. If Viren had just done what Aaravos asked earlier, he might have at least the residue of some magic at his fingertips, maybe enough to startle his way free. Alas.

“Drop your weapons,” Claudia growls, hand clenched tight around a handful of white stag velvet and the talon of a giant stormhawk. 

Weight on his good leg, Viren has both hands on the eclipse staff and is coiled to strike. Proud as he is of the obscure-but-clever combination Claudia’s come up with, he’d much prefer if she doesn’t have to actually use it. Besides -- if she does, he’ll be able to amplify it from here.

“You first,” shouts the Sunfire elf using a visibly grouchy Aaravos as a shield, standing between them and another soldier on the ground.

“That’s pretty dumb,” Claudia explains. “Because I can use  _ this  _ from where I’m standing. You won’t make it close enough to swing that thing.”

“In case you’re interested,” Aaravos says, seemingly more irritated than frightened to have his life in danger. “They’re both injured.”

“How do you know?” Viren checks without taking his eyes off the elf. 

“Well, one of them is on the ground,” snipes Aaravos.

“And the  _ other one?”  _

“Look at him,” Aaravos says, as though it’s too simple to bother explaining.

“I’m fine!” Shouts the Sunfire elf. When Viren does look a little closer, he sees it -- Aaravos is right. There’s a tremor going all the way down his left side. If his guess is correct, the injury is probably under the shoulder. 

From the ground, a soft voice: “Stop, Abek. There’s no point. We’re outnumbered and out-armed.”

Abek says, “Tomil, look, they have the primal stone! It’s corrupted, yes, but if we could  _ get _ that and bring it home, then maybe--”

“We  _ can’t, _ ” answers the one apparently called Tomil. 

“I’d listen to him if I were you,” Claudia advises Abek. 

“Skywing!” Abek shouts to Aaravos, as one does with a prisoner. “Why do you travel with these humans? Do you not know who they are? Are you not loyal to the dragon queen?”

“Who, me? Sk--” Aaravos interrupts himself with a mad cackle. “Did you hear that? Viren, did you hear--”

“I heard it,” Viren indulges through his teeth. So, he really isn’t recognizable, the way he looks now, without all the stars. Interesting -- and probably for the best, all things considered.

Tomil, the one on the ground, drags himself to a sitting position. “Abek, forget it. We’re done for.”

“Here’s a thought,” Claudia says, “Drop the sword or this spell goes to your friend there rather than you. Does _ that  _ help you make up your mind?”

Abek digs in his heels at first, but then he looks from Viren to Claudia and back again, and tightens the blade. “Do it, and _ your  _ friend dies.”

“I don’t like him that much,” Claudia shoots back. 

Viren returns to his prior stance, supported by the staff rather than wielding it. He knows they will imagine him less agile than he is, so he might as well try this the easy way first. Eyes narrowed, he asks, “What are you doing here? You’re very far from home. Surely you can’t have been looking for us.”

Aaravos is the one who answers for them, not minding the bead of blood that drips from where the trembling sword cuts him: “They’re deserters, obviously.”

“Is that true?” Viren demands

Abek, the one with the long hair and the broken helmet in his hands, looks at his companion, who has begun to list, apparently unable to even continue sitting up without support. A whole conversation passes between them in expressions. 

Finally, Abek says, “It’s my fault, not his. Tomil fell, and I ran, kind of. I carried him as far as I could. For Sunfire soldiers…”

“Let me guess, you come home carrying your shield or carried on it.” Viren speculates. 

“More or less,” Abek admits. He looks at Tomil. “I didn’t want to go back to any place that didn’t have him in it.”

Tomil can’t bear the eye contact, and looks down at the grass. “You’ll have to anyway, at this rate.”

“Perhaps no one has to kill anyone,” Viren announces, having come to a decision. “My proposal is this: You let my... _ friend _ ... here go, we help you with your injuries, and we all part ways and none of us ever breathe a word to anyone that we crossed paths.”

Both of them look up suddenly. Abek says, “What do you believe you can do?”

“Uh, magic, duh,” Claudia says, putting her attack components away in one pocket of her hip pouch and getting ready to reach for something different. 

“No,” Tomil says. “No, absolutely not. I will tolerate many indignities, but I will  _ not  _ be  _ tainted  _ with that  _ disease  _ you call magic.”

“Tomil--” Abek pleads.

“No!” Tomil insists. 

“Fine,” Viren agrees. He prepares for a performance. “I know another way.”

Beside him, Claudia frowns. “You do?”

“Yes,” he says, shooting her a look which she correctly interprets as a directive to be silent. “Is there essentine in these woods?”

Hesitantly, Tomil answers: “There is. Back the way we came from, there is a patch.”

This, Viren already knew. He wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t. “Good,” he says. “I will go and prepare a poultice. It is not as _ effective  _ as a spell would be, but it should hold back your fever long enough for you to heal, if you are fortunate and strong.”

“Your friend stays with us,” Abek says. “You have one hour, and then if you do not return we kill him.”

“Rude,” Aaravos mutters under his breath.

“More than enough time,” Viren assures. “Claudia, with me. I’ll need your assistance.”

“Uh… right,” Claudia says, dusting excess stag velvet off her palm and hurrying after.

They pass back north among trees, precisely the way they came -- not that the Sunfire elves had to know that, though in better circumstances they might have guessed. Claudia keeps glancing backward. Once, Viren does the same, and through the trees he can see that Abek has allowed Aaravos to sit down. Two against one must seem like comfortable odds, even if one of them is barely functional at all. It isn’t much farther before they can’t be seen anymore.

“Dad,” Claudia hisses, when she thinks they’re out of earshot. “What are we doing? W hat is essentine gonna do?”

“It will carry the  _ spell  _ I put on it quite nicely,” Viren says softly, just in case the elves’ hearing is better than he thinks. 

“Uh, didn’t you hear that guy? He’s just about the  _ biggest _ jerk about dark magic--”

“I did,” Viren says. “Not surprising, given his affiliation.”

“We’re gonna do it anyway?” she checks. 

“We are indeed,” he confirms tightly. And then, in response to the held-breath silence from Claudia, he asks, “Is that a problem?”

“No,” she says quickly. “Nope. Oh hey look there’s the essentine!”

In the pocket of Viren’s stolen clothes are just the things he might expect a medic to have in his pockets -- including the thin linen cloth, looking much like a handkerchief, that is used for assembling and containing a poultice. This he spreads on Claudia’s outstretched hands, so that he can pick the small leaves, bruise and shred them, and pile them on the cloth. 

“How do _ you  _ know  _ they  _ don’t know that essentine isn’t _ for  _ this?”

“That’s why I asked them where it was,” he answers. “To give them a chance to protest. If they knew, they would have suggested it wouldn’t work. They’re soldiers, through and through, clearly.”

That last sentence comes out with a little more contempt than he’d intended, and he politely pretends to ignore the flinch on Claudia’s face, quickly buried. He adds a few symmetrical blue petals to the cloth, and a sprinkling of powder from the crushed beak of a tide-sparrow. Over it, he whispers an incantation. The light of the magic moves through him and comes through his eyes from inside, blinding him for a moment, and then goes dark.

He blinks away the disturbance and examines the result: perfect. He ties the corners of the cloth for transport and takes it from Claudia. 

They have no timepiece, but it is easy enough to know that they’re back well before the hour is up.

When they return, Tomil is leaning against Abek, eyes shut. Aaravos sits beside them, unharmed but for a small cut at the base of his neck. 

“Ah, you’re back,” Aaravos says dryly. 

“Did you find what you needed?” There is incredible anxiety in Abek’s voice. 

“Yup!” Claudia assures him with a fake sort of cheer. “One totally herbal anti-fever poultice, delivered straight to you.”

Viren offers it up, and Abek eyes it with suspicion. Interestingly, he glances at _Aaravos_ (who nods minutely) before he takes it. 

Abek asks, “Any special instructions?”

“Soak it in the hottest water he can tolerate on his skin. Be sure the top is tightly bound, put it in the water, count to ten, and then remove it. Bind the contents against the injury immediately. Did you get all of that?”

Aaravos can hardly contain his knowing half-smirk. 

“Understood,” Abek says. 

“Then we’ll be on our way,” Viren adds. He extends a hand, which Aaravos takes to stand up and rejoin them -- Abek signals his acceptance by not moving to prevent this. “Not a word to anyone.”

“Likewise.”

“You have my promise.”

“And mine.” Abek holds the resting Tomil a little tighter. 

“Where are you gonna go?” Claudia ventures to ask. “I’m  _ guessing _ Lux Aurea isn’t an option.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Abek says. “Now we have a chance to figure that out, together. Thank you, and farewell.”

The three of them walk on Southeast, staying under cover until the sun is below the horizon. Once night falls, and they pass beyond the eastern edge of the woods to avoid the Branchfolk, they all seem to let out a held breath. 

“I still feel weird about it,” Claudia says, hugging herself, each hand grasping the opposite elbow. “Using dark magic after they straight-up asked us not to. I know it’s dumb, but… I don’t know. Lying to them like that, it just feels… bad.”

Aaravos looks at her with a mixture of pity and adoration, and then he snickers. 

“What?” She glares daggers back. 

“They knew,” is all Aaravos says in the same tone that he might deliver the answer to a very easy riddle.

“What do you mean they knew?” Claudia demands, seemingly refusing to believe what she is too smart not to already understand. “They knew what?”

Viren already knows what’s coming. He suspected as much the moment he handed the poultice over, so he isn’t surprised by what Aaravos says. 

“I sat with them the entire time. I have no doubt. They  _ knew _ you were doing dark magic to save them. Unsurprisingly, they wanted to live.”

“Why’d they make such a big deal about it then?” Claudia grumbles. She wants to be convinced. 

“Plausible deniability helps the medicine go down,” Aaravos says, in the tone of someone quoting their elder. Who could be older than he is, though? “When you let people keep their illusions, it's much easier to get them to take what they want anyway, as long as no one says the quiet part out loud. We  _ pretended  _ enough to tell them what they wanted to hear, they  _ pretended _ to believe it, and everyone got what they desired, even if they did know the truth the whole time.”

Aaravos turns his head to look back at Viren, walking behind them, and fixes him with a long, weighty stare. 

“You can’t  _ really  _ call a thing like that a lie,” Aaravos says. “Can you?”

* * *

The trip to the Silvergrove is full of silences. Callum notices landmarks from their first trip that he’d like to reminisce about, but for most of the time they spend walking, Rayla doesn’t seem like she wants to talk. He does try, the first few times, but quickly gives up in the face of monosyllabic answers and a tendency to speed up. 

They take the easy road, this time. 

Rayla carries the coins, her hand tight around them in her pocket almost all of the time. Callum isn’t sure if she’s petrified she’ll lose them and constantly checking that that hasn’t happened, or if she’s touching them for comfort. In any case, it’s beginning to grow a tad compulsive.

When it was just seasickness, he did so well at distracting her, but now it seems like she doesn’t  _ want  _ to be distracted. 

Callum likewise turns inward in response. 

Each time they stop to rest, he reads. For all his searching, he wasn’t able to find exactly what he was looking for about the coins, but he did narrow it down to only as many books as he could carry, and now he’s working through them one by one. Their covers are opaque as to the contents, so the more Rayla pulls away, the more he reads openly, for lack of anything better to do. 

At night, at least, she seems to open up a little. Is that because the moon makes her more comfortable, or because she’s tired from a long day of crushing her feelings into a little box? It’s not exactly a question that Callum can ask. Instead of asking, they talk about other things -- not feelings, not family, and not the coins. 

A spot is chosen to rest, at the top of a hill overlooking the path ahead. He nudges the boundaries a little when he asks her to tell him about something she wants to show him, when they get there, and she loops back around to the food. 

“It’s not as extravagant as yours,” Rayla admits. “But it’s just as good.”

“I’m not surprised, what with all the Xadian fruits and vegetables you must be able to pick. Do you have a farm, or--”

“Mm, sort of,” she hedges. “It’s not a farm like a human one. We cultivate the plants we like along paths or in clusters in the woods. It’s less effort than what you do, but there’s still plenty to go round. Plus, wait until you try the meat.”

“Oh!” Callum chuckles in surprise. “I… I don’t know why I thought you didn’t eat meat.”

“You thought I drank blood!” Rayla protests 

“No, uh, after that, I mean.”

“You went from thinking I drank blood to thinking I don’t eat meat?” Her eyebrows are high on her forehead. “You must be jokin’.”

Callum shrugs. “I… guess I did. So? Tell me more about the meat.”

Rayla just looks at his face, snickers, shakes her head, and shifts closer, practically in his lap so that they can fit together into the same gap between tree roots. “Well there’s no blood, but we do eat some things raw.”

He absolutely doesn’t want to say anything rude, but his posture gives him away. Their arms are twined together and she must feel the way he tenses. 

“What now? You’re going to complain are you?”

“No! No, I just… is that safe? I guess it must be different with Xadian animals. With pigs and chickens and things, if humans don’t cook them, we get really sick.”

“Ohhh,” Rayla says. “I did wonder why  _ everythin’  _ was burnt to a crisp. Well, we do cook  _ some  _ things. Just not all of it. Like, we cook the fat branchbeater birds, ‘cause the skin gets crispy when you roast it over a fire. I think you’ll like that. I’m no’ much good with making food, but Ethari’s great at it.”

“Bet you can slice stuff up real good though, right?” Callum says with a chopping, slashing gesture.

At that, Rayla truly laughs. “ _ That  _ I can do.”

“So what  _ do  _ you eat raw?” He asks, curious despite his reservations. 

“Raw tidetato is  _ delicious  _ if you can catch it,” she says. 

“Tide...tato?”

“How do I describe it?” Rayla twines her fingers together with his. “It’s sort of like a cross between a fish and a beaver? No hair, two layers of skin, sort of fat fishy body and tail, but it’s got these chubby little legs and pointy ears. They live underwater usually.”

“Sounds kind of cute,” Callum says. 

“Cute  _ and  _ delicious. Luckily for you, it’s served in lit’le cubes,” she gestures to indicate the size, “so you don’t have to look at the face. Plus, I know how much you love cubes.”

“I guess I could try it,” he considers, getting a little lost in her eyes to where he would probably say that to just about anything right now. Truly, though, he wants to be cultured, he wants to learn, and he wants to make a good impression. When he thinks about it, he’s almost like an ambassador now. He’d probably have to eat the tidetato whether it sounded good or not.

“You won’t regret it,” she promises. 

They lapse into an easy silence. Ever since connecting with the Sky Primal, Callum feels  _ conscious  _ of breezes and wind, the way he imagines a cat’s whiskers would be. He tilts his head back against the tree and just feels it on his face, the way it swishes up the hill, building speed, and goes careening off the other side.

He hasn’t actually flown since the spire. A part of him worries sometimes about whether he  _ could  _ do it again, like if no one was in mortal peril, would he still be able to summon those wings? His arms itch to find out.

Not right now, of course. If Rayla isn’t actually asleep, she must nearly be, eyes closed and breathing steady, and they’re tangled up together to the point that there’s no way he could get up without waking her. 

With his free hand he pulls one of the smaller books from his bag, fortunately just within arm’s reach, and positions it so he can read without too much jostling. It’s about as peaceful as anything he could wish for. 

Callum’s so relaxed he almost doesn’t realize when he turns the page and finds exactly what he’s been looking for. 

It hits him a beat late, he’s almost turned the page again before he stops, eyes scanning over the lines again, and then a third time. This is  _ it.  _ On the left side the page is a clear explanation of the spell that brought those horrible prison-coins into existence, and on the right, the reversal that could free Rayla’s family. 

He looks down at her, body tranquil and loose. His is the opposite now, his pulse a fluttering hammer beneath his skin. 

_ Making  _ the coins is a grisly affair, with a lot of preparation work unpleasant enough to make Callum cringe, but unmaking them is comparatively simple. The hardest part seems to be fulfilling the same rules that Lujanne mentioned, making sure they’re on magical soil (the cube should help him with that) and that they’re as much as possible in the presence of the Primal Source they’re connected to. 

_ Primal Sources,  _ the book says,  _ have a record, like a memory, of the creatures linked to them. In this way, a nexus is like a library. _

Other than that, all it needs is a couple of flora components (helpfully drawn at the bottom of the page, in case the names are unfamiliar) and _ any _ living creature with an exoskeleton that is linked to the same Primal Source as the imprisoned spirit. 

A couple of flowers and a bug. 

That’s all.

Even when he had imagined that there was a chance it was a lower-grade spell that didn’t use anything too unpleasant, he couldn’t have pictured it being as simple and gentle as this. 

Damn. 

A part of him actually wishes it was terrible -- wishes that it called for the viscera of a hundred kittens or something equally horrific, or that it came with a bunch of warnings about difficulty or danger, so that he would have an ready-made excuse to snap the book shut and never open it again. 

Now he has to tell her.

He  _ has  _ to tell her. 

Doesn’t he? 

He imagines  _ not  _ telling her -- going with her to the Silvergrove, laying her family to rest, mourning them, knowing all the while that he could have saved their lives. He remembers the way Ethari looked by the fountain, imagines looking him in the eye knowing that he could save the love of his life any time, but instead keeping that a secret.

He imagines what it would be like if the shoe was on the other foot, if someone knew how to save _ his _ family and didn’t do it, didn’t even  _ suggest  _ doing it, because they worried he wouldn’t like the method. It might save some pain and uncertainty for a moment, but if he ever found out, it would feel like utter betrayal. 

These images, these thoughts, clench at his chest and turn his stomach. Whatever happens, he doesn’t think he can live with himself if he doesn’t at least tell her what he knows. 

He closes the book and sets it aside on the grass. 

“Rayla,” he whispers. 

She winces briefly and then blinks into focus. Since they started dating, he’s thought up all kinds of horrifically cheesy poetic phrases in his head to describe her eyes, things he would  _ never  _ tell her if only to spare them both the embarrassment --  _ a field of lavender in the summer sunset  _ is what comes to him just now. 

Maybe it’s for the best she was trying to kill him when they met, because without mortal terror to give him focus, he wonders if he would have been able to get words out at all. 

“Hmm?” Rayla only picks up her head for a moment before resting it again, but Callum shifts to pull away.

“Uh… we need to talk, but you should be… awake awake,” Callum says. 

That does the job, though -- her relaxed, loose-limbed position vanishes as though it didn’t exist at all, the customary tension returning.

“What is it?” She asks, words coiled tight with trepidation. 

“ _ Hoo-- _ okay, this is difficult.” Callum takes a deep breath. “You know how… you made a joke about me bringing all the books in the library, and I’ve been reading a lot whenever we take a break?”

“Uh… yeah,” Rayla says, as in,  _ obviously.  _

“Well, I should probably tell you about that.”

“You woke me up to tell me about your books?”

“No. Yes. No. I…” He takes another breath and then says the rest without pausing, so she can’t jump in until he’s done. “The books are from Lord Viren’s room. I went back the night before we left and basically gathered up anything I thought might  _ maybe  _ have something related to the coins and brought the likeliest ones with me and I’ve been going through them looking to see how the  _ undo  _ spell might work just in case it’s really easy or something.”

“Callum--” Her voice is like the warning of a hidden rattlesnake.

He goes on with the same unflagging patter: “I just wanted to  _ know,  _ and if it was something horrible and gross I was just going to leave it alone and forget it ever happened but…”

_ “But?”  _ She practically spits. 

Callum sighs deeply. “It’s not. It’s not gross, or horrible, or even difficult. Claudia was showing me weirder, more complicated stuff when we were like 8 years old. All the bad stuff is in making the coins in the first place. Unmaking them is--”

“No. _ No-- _ ”

“I’m not saying I’m gonna do it, or that we have to do it, or anything, I just wanted to give you the--”

“Why did you have to  _ say  _ that?!” Rayla’s voice breaks. “Why d’you have to  _ tell  _ me this? It’s not bad enough I have to live with knowing my family met a fate worse than death? Now you tell me this, I have to know that I  _ chose  _ that, by not doing dark magic to save them? How could you think this would  _ help? _ ”

“Because… I’d want to know, if it were my family,” Callum says helplessly, the reasoning sounding so much stupider now that he says it out loud. 

“Do you know what I’ve been thinkin’ about, this whole time, while you were _ studyin’ dark magic?” _ Those last three words come out like a curse.

“What?”

There are tears in her eyes and she can’t meet his gaze. “Every year in the mid-winter there’s a day when it’s said the wall between the living and the dead is thin. That’s when we have the Feast of the Dead, where we burn illusion food and drink. When we do, the real thing shows up in the afterlife and our ancestors can eat and drink and celebrate together. This year, I’ll know my family aren’t among them, and  _ never can be. _ That even when _ I _ die, I can truly  _ never _ see them again, and they can’t see each other, or anybody else.”

“Then... wouldn't it be better if we _did_ try to release them?”

“And risk losin’  _ you!  _ You’re putting me in an  _ impossible  _ position. You just… woke me ou’ of a sound sleep to tell me you’re willing to die to save them--”

“I don’t think I’ll die.”

“But you don’t know, do you!? And even so! The first time, I know you didn’t know what you were doing. You thought it was the right thing, you didn’t know any better, it was the same as me tryin’ to kill Ez. But you know better now! This is the whole point, Callum. You can’t just  _ trade life _ , and you can’t ask me to do it either… but now I  _ know,  _ so  _ I’m _ trapped too. No matter what I do, either I’m sacrificing you to save them or the other way ‘round.”

“Rayla, I’m--”

“Don’t tell me you’re sorry.”

That sews his lips shut for a moment, and then he decides on something different to say: “What do you need?”

Rayla puts the heels of her hands against her eyes and presses. “I’m an assassin, Callum. I’m not the judge, I’m just the executioner. This is  _ too _ much for me. I just want to burn those terrible books and… and try to pretend this conversation never happened.”

Callum’s knee-jerk reaction is to protest, but he bites his tongue long enough to think it through. Simple as the spell is, he’s already committed it to memory. He can give her this catharsis, this peace of mind, and still be there to catch her if she changes her mind or has regrets. It’s still a reversible decision.

It’s still possible to save them.

So he says: “Okay.”

“Really?” She looks at him like he’s a jigsaw puzzle missing a piece. “You’d _burn books_ for _me?_ ”

“Yeah.”

She rushes forward and gathers him into a hug. Muttering into his shoulder, she says, “Sorry I yelled at you. I know you’re trying to help.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. Everything about this sucks.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“Let’s go get some firewood?” He offers.

She nods. There’s no shortage of dry twigs and grasses, and they build their fire at the top of the hill methodically. Together, they rip pages from their bindings in clumps and throw them into the flames, and the sparks from the burning paper sail off in all directions like little orange fireflies. 

When they finally move on, Callum’s bag is deflated, unburdened, light as a feather. Something inside him, though, feels heavier than before.


	6. Book Four: Earth | Chapter Six: Kingdom, Division, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“If I were a tree, I would have no reason to love a human.” ___  
>  **― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Trailer voice) _Two brotherrrrs... have some long and necessary conversations with peoplllle._
> 
> I promise the next chapter will have more action. On the bright side: Callum and Ethari bonding time!
> 
> (Note: This chapter contains underage drinking and references to even underage-er drinking, but all in moderation.)

  
  
  


**Book Four: Earth**

**Chapter 6: Kingdom, Division, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species**

Ezran rests his chin on his palm. The words on the page in front of him are swimming. He’s only been reading for half an hour and he’s already fading. Instead of thinking about the text, he’s thinking about being tired, and peckish, and bored. Did he used to feel like this when he was reading? He never enjoyed it like Callum does, but he didn’t hate it. Looking back a year or two, everything seems like it was so much easier.

If Callum were around, he could take a break. He’d have a ready excuse to stretch his legs and and find out what his big brother was up to -- but Callum’s _not_ around, so he can’t.

The chair, made for his dad, is a little too big, so he draws his legs up and sits cross-legged on the seat, shifting Bait in his lap and leaning over the edge of the writing desk. His fingers plunge into the forest of his hair and rub at his scalp and fidget with his curls as he tries to keep himself awake. It doesn’t help that he can’t sleep at night. Since he changed rooms, he’s waking up every time the wind blows around the outside walls, or a guard walks down the hall, or, in one case, when Narampu dropped a paperweight on the floor.

_You’ll get used to it,_ Callum promised before he left. How long can that take? When they were trying to get Zym to Xadia they were running around and hiding in forests and caves, and he was _still_ sleeping better than now.

“Time for a break?” Narampu offers from her position, curled up in the windowsill, morning sun glinting through her crystalline horns and throwing pale green spots of light on the stone walls every time she moves her head.

She and Ylai take turns: a primary and a secondary, swapping places every few hours. He can tell when it happens by her posture. Ylai is always a bit stiff, but Narampu swings wildly between extremes of demeanor, stony-solid when she’s primary, and almost fluid in her relaxation when she’s secondary, like a cat asleep in a sunbeam. Like the cat, she could be alert and claws-out in a second, but it’s strange to see the difference.

Ylai agrees: “Fresh air will maybe help. And moving your blood. Let’s… combat education.”

Ezran laughs out loud at the meaning of Ylai’s mistake, and then claps a hand over his mouth. “Sorry. I know what you meant.”

A little flush brings pink to Ylai’s greenish cheeks. “I apologize. Please do not hesitate to correct me.”

“No no no, it’s fine, I understood you fine,” Ezran reassures. “You know, _moving my blood_ might be a good idea.”

“Sounds like a plan!” Narampu offers. “While you two are working up a sweat, I’ll get us some snacks for after. Hey, Ezran--”

“Yeah?”

“How ‘bout I poke around the library for you, see if there’s anything from the human books that might help you link up with what Nafai’s on about? I’m no scholar, but I’m sure your librarian’ll be willing to help. I’ve been talking with her, wanted to read some easy human books, she seems really nice.”

“Good idea, thanks!” Ezran scoops up Bait and carries him to the door, which Ylai has already opened, a signal to the guards outside to change stance. 

As he leaves, Ezran catches an odd look that Ylai shoots at Narampu, but when he glances over his shoulder, it comes to nothing, it might as well be a pebble bouncing off a boulder. No impact. 

When he gets back from training, there are two books and a scroll on his writing desk, along with a glass of milk and a cut-up fruit he's only ever tried once before. 

The books are dusty at the top edges, but the scroll is brand new and smells of fresh air and feathers: not from the library, but from the aviary. It bears a Neolandian seal, but instead of the official one, it is personal, the mark of Princess Hasima. He doesn’t make a fuss about it when he unrolls it -- it doesn’t seem like either Narampu or Ylai even notice -- and he reads it with a carefully neutral expression. 

It isn’t exactly an official communication, is it? Hasima addresses him directly: _Ezran, who I hope I can count as friend,_ and there are two very different styles of handwriting. The main one, he recognizes as belonging to the princess herself, Kasef’s younger sister. The other he doesn’t know, but as he reads he discovers it belongs to her chosen regent, General Tal.

King Ahling, it seems, didn’t make it after all, and nor did Kasef, and Hasima has a lot more to say besides.

None of it is good.

When he rolls it back up and cracks open one of the human history books that Narampu brought him, he doesn’t say anything about it, but he can’t quite put it out of his mind. 

The early afternoon passes without remark until Ezran hits a breaking point and lets out the kind of sigh that his father might once have teased him for. _You sound like you’re bearing the weight of the world,_ he would say, with laughter in his voice. 

Narampu slides off the sill and perches on the trunk at the foot of the bed. “Something bothering you?”

“Kind of?” Ezran says. “I mean, it’s not one big thing. I guess it’s a bunch of little things.”

“I’m all ears,” Narampu says, wiggling her ears exaggeratedly. 

“I really appreciate you helping me find these library books, I want Nafai to think I’m smart, but… a lot of the stuff in here is really different to what he’s teaching me. There’s things he didn’t mention that seem important, and some of it seems like the _opposite_ of what he said. I’m just starting to get confused.” He turns to his other, more stoic crownguard. “Ylai, do you know a lot about this stuff?”

“I know some.” Ylai says, hesitating. “I have read books, but… not so much as my brother. If my mind is one candle-flame, Nafai’s mind is a festival of lanterns. I am certain he can help you.”

“What about you?” Ezran asks Narampu.

“Me? Nah. I can only read at all ‘cause my grandma was a mage and she taught me for fun. Anyway, Rootfolk mostly do history out loud, aye? I was gonna say the same as Ylai: Better ask Mister Lantern Festival about it.”

Fine then. Nafai’s a teacher, after all, it’s his job to answer questions.

* * *

The night is clear and damp, the smells of grass and something like jasmine heavy in the air. Little glowing bugs, some blue-white Xadian variety of fireflies, have lined the paths all the way here, and they float and dip around the glade like living summer snowflakes. Like every other day, Rayla has seemed to come alive bit by bit as the sun backed off, and while she’s still clearly nervous about the approach, she seems more at ease now.

Palm to palm, a zing of energy passing between them, Callum and Rayla remove the barrier to the Silvergrove. 

It isn’t like last time.

Last time, the Silvergrove was going about its business, so quiet that it took a moment to even realize what was wrong. 

This time, when the illusion falls away with that characteristic veil-ripple, the whole settlement (or near enough) is waiting for them: elders, parents, children, generations all together, arm in arm and hand in hand, clutching beautiful canes or sitting in the grass or standing shoulder to shoulder, like a surprise party waiting for the guest of honor. 

The cheer of _Rayla!_ goes up, so joyfully out-of-sync as to be almost incomprehensible. She can hardly get to the bottom of the tree before they’re on her, embracing, touching, talking over one another. For all the anxiety she concealed on the approach, this response first startles, and the soothes, and a loose smile replaces the hard line of tension in her mouth.

Callum hangs back, seemingly unnoticed for the most part, and not about to go out of his way to make himself the center of attention. Somewhere in the woods, a bit off to his right, he could swear he hears someone calling him, the same way some people think they hear a distant voice beneath the chaos of noisy, rushing water. 

He looks that way, into the darkness among the trees that seem to march up a low hill, but the only movement is natural: the birds and bugs, and the shudder of leaves in the occasional breeze. The forest is quiet. 

“Callum! -- Hello? Xadia to Callum!?”

It isn’t that he doesn’t _realize_ Rayla’s called his name the first time, it’s that pulling away requires uprooting his attention, which takes a moment. 

“Huh?” He finally says, “Sorry, I just… thought I--”

“You hearin’ funny noises again?” Rayla asks, but doesn’t give him time to respond before she says, “Come and meet everyo--ah!”

She interrupts herself with laughter as several elves, Ethari among them, lift her up on their shoulders. 

Ethari must notice him looking a little adrift, because he explains over the noise, “There’s to be a welcome home feast, come along, we can do introductions there.”

Obediently, Callum trails behind the little crowd, eyes trained on Rayla, who looks back with the kind of crinkly-eyed smile that makes warmth bloom in his chest. Soon enough, he imagines that the tone of things will grow somber, given the reason that they’ve come, so he’s glad that she can have tonight to celebrate the good.

He follows along past a reflecting pool and up one staircase and then another. In the trunk of an enormous tree (if he and Ezran and Rayla all tried together, they couldn’t wrap their arms around half of it) a wide door hangs open, and beyond it, more stairs, this time in a tight spiral downward. 

In the midst of the chatter and laughter, Rayla winds up near the front of the group, but she is waiting for him when he reaches the bottom and takes in his surroundings properly. 

The cavern beneath the tree is far larger than he would have guessed, at least half the size of the throne room back home. Thick, serpentine roots twist and tangle densely enough to form an uninterrupted arched ceiling and rippling walls, and the floor is finished with pale stained wood inlaid with intricate silver swirls. The long tables and chairs match the design, and given their size, Callum can’t help wondering how they got them down here to begin with. 

Light is provided by glowing white threads that twine along the roots, wrapped around them, hanging down and dangling from the ones on the ceiling, stretching across from one root to another along the walls. At first, Callum thinks this is the work of mages, and then he sees one of them _move_. 

Rayla must see him jump, because she snickers and leans in. “Those are waneworms! Can’t bite you or me, their mouths are too small, so no worries. They’re too busy making their homes in the roots anyway.”

“Nice of them to light the place for you,” Callum says, reaching toward the wall but not quite touching one.

“Don’t think they’ve got much choice,” Rayla laughs. 

“This place really is beautiful. I never would have expected Moonshadow elves to have a place like this _underground._ ”

“Right,” she acknowledges, “I don’t believe most of the other settlements do, just us --yes, hello, I’m happy to be back-- we’re so close to the border, and --I know, I know, just a second-- even with the illusions, there had to be a place we could hide, if we had to. Of course, after a few hundred years of nobody having to--”

She can hardly get a word in without someone interrupting to say hello, and give her a hug (and eye Callum with an unguarded combination of curiosity and concern) and Ethari finally whispers something in her ear. Whatever it is, she grimaces, nods and follows him up a few steps, so that she’s head-and-shoulders above everyone else. 

At the last moment, she reaches down and pulls Callum up onto the step alongside them, the three of them a very tight fit for the narrow space.

Ethari reaches out to where a delicate bell hangs from the banister, just above head-height, and rings it. 

“Okay, okay!” He says to the crowd, which disentangles itself from its conversations and turns its collective face to him. As soft as his voice is, it commands attention. “I’d like to help Rayla introduce her guest.”

She is openly nervous and flushing furiously. “Ah…right. Everybody, Prince Callum of Katolis, Callum, Everybody. I guess I should say… you know, uh the ambler in the room… might have noticed he’s human--” 

Callum shifts his hand minutely towards hers, an invitation, and she grabs it as if to steady herself. 

She takes a deep breath. With a bit more confidence, she says, “I know you’re all sayin’ very nice things about me, about what happened at the Storm Spire and all, but it’s only because of _him_ that any of that was possible. I know how some of you feel about humans, but I promise, Callum’s not like that. If you’re going to welcome me home, you have to welcome him too, because, well, we’re… together.”

Rayla squeezes his hand for effect, and he squeezes back. With his free hand, he waves in a way that tries to balance _diplomatic_ with _cheerful_ and probably doesn’t quite achieve either, but no one seems to mind, too busy muttering excitedly to one another.

They all look to him, at which point he says, “It’s really nice to meet you all. Thank you for letting me visit.” Unsure of the way that the locals would do it, Callum bows in the way he’s been taught at home and hopes the message is clear enough.

There is an awkward moment, but then Ethari just nudges them down off the step and back into the room and they are absorbed into a crowd even more eager than before. In the end, the little introduction doesn’t actually save them much in the way of time or breath, because they wind up having to explain again and again the frankly trying circumstances under which they met.

Perhaps he just does a good job of telling it (especially after the third or fourth time) but the general impression seems to be that it’s terribly romantic and exciting, which makes Callum think they must have a certain kind of novel here in Xadia, too, or something like it. 

(Later, he he will lie on a thick cotton sleep mat in Rayla’s parents’ home, staring at the smooth curves of metal adorning the ceiling and listening to what he has come to call _the Xadian hum_ , and it will occur to him that not once does anyone but Ethari offer up even a cursory _sorry for your loss_ about his stepdad.)

He can’t complain, not really. Everyone is _nice,_ in their way, and he has to appreciate the hospitality and the care and the compliments, because of course it would be rude if he didn’t. They mean well, he figures, even if it comes off a bit funny when the ask _can you eat Xadian fruit?_ and _can you see that or should I bring it closer?_ (he wonders what they must think of his eyesight) and, to Rayla, right in front of him, _he’s good looking for a human!_

Really, he can’t legitimately hold it against anyone. It’s not so bad -- they’re not chasing him out with pitchforks, and it certainly isn’t as if _he’s_ never put _his_ foot in his mouth, and who _knows_ what kind of dumb things people probably said to Rayla back home when he wasn’t around. 

And the food _is_ good. It isn’t that exciting, but there are highlights, and there’s nothing he has a hard time eating. There is also a drink they call _geal,_ served in tiny cups.

When Ethari offers him one, he reflexively asks if it’s really okay for him to have. Back home, the servants have been pouring him wine with dinner for about a year and a half now, but his stepdad always told him _just because they give to you doesn’t mean you have to drink it_ and he thinks of it as a thing for toasting, and little more.

Ethari, who has already had several of these, leans in close and says, “If you grew up here you’d’ve had your first one of these at your tenth birthday. I’d say you’re okay. You’re a good lad, Callum. I wouldn' toast with you if you weren’t.”

“Wait, ten? So Rayla--?” Callum’s voice squeaks in surprise.

“Aye, at ceremonies. Not much of a fan, though. You should have seen her the first time--” Ethari laughs at his own memory. “Like she’d bitten right into a gioquat. Almost cried. Probably would have, if Runaan weren’t watchin’.”

Despite having no internal reference for a gioquat, Callum’s pretty sure he can picture the expression. “It’s that bad?”

“No, no! Here - try it, try it.”

Callum takes the little clear cup from Ethari and holds it between his forefinger and thumb. The liquid inside makes him think of a melted pearl. Would it be rude to sniff it? Probably, so he just takes a sip and hopes for the best.

He comes back coughing, but despite feeling like he was just punched in the nose by a very angry mint leaf, the aftertaste smothers the worst of the initial impression in a kind of sour honey flavor. While it’s far from the best thing he’s ever tasted, it could certainly be worse.

“Oy, Ethari!” Rayla finds them, having just made a circuit of the room. “Wha’ are you doing inflicting _geal_ on poor Callum!”

“The lad’s just stopped a war and saved the world, I think he’s earned a drink, don’t you?” Ethari says, voice low but playful as he lays a protective arm around Callum. 

Rayla snorts and there’s some undoubtedly clever retort, but Callum misses it, not paying attention anymore, too busy feeling Ethari’s weight on his shoulders both literally and figuratively. He follows a swirl on the floor with his eyes as he thinks: the ceremony is tomorrow night, at midnight, to lay the coins in the pool. 

He looks at the side of Ethari’s face, and lets himself be poured another drink. This one, Rayla concedes to drink with them only to indulge and amuse Ethari. She complains the whole time, wincing and growling and then stalking off in search of something to wash the taste out. The second time is better than the first.

The party breaks up late, and Rayla takes him a roundabout way to her parents’ home, so that she can show him around a little. 

“It’s laid out like a hand, you see?” Rayla says holding up her hand and wiggling her fingers, “This central area is like the palm, and most of the homes are in the fingers. These pathways here, we call strands. My home’s up along this one here--”

“Strands,” Callum repeats automatically. His mind is somewhere else. He’s going to need directions again tomorrow. 

“Where I showed you before, that’s where Ethari crafts -- that’s just up that tree over there, you see? He and Runaan used to stay with me a lot, but it sounds like he’s been staying in the workshop recently, which is for the best, there’ll be more room for you under the loft. I’d offer you the loft, but there’s no ladder anymore, so you might have a hard time getting up there.”

“Sounds sensible,” Callum says, still far away. 

“You alright?”

“I’m good. It’s just late.” 

When he gets up off the mat in the pre-dawn light, he doesn’t imagine that Rayla doesn’t hear him -- absolutely no way could he sneak out undetected, so he doesn’t try. Either way, she doesn’t say anything from her place in the loft when he gets up and puts on his shoes and jacket and slips out through the door.

There’s a faint mist in the woods at this hour, and it sticks to the steps, he has to take care and hold the banister both going down and then going up again when he gets to the tree that supports Ethari’s workshop.

His brain screams, _you saw Rayla’s reaction, why would you think Ethari’s would be any different? For all you know it’ll be worse, and this guy could kill you and make it look like an accident._

But his legs know he has a job to do, and carry him to the door anyway, His hand makes a fist whether he wants it to or not, and knocks. 

Do elves knock? 

Is that a thing here?

Or is there some secret doorbell he can’t see?

He waits with that question on his mind for the space of a few breaths, and then the door opens just enough for Ethari’s bleary, confused face to emerge from the shadows beyond. 

“Wh--oh, Callum. Is everythin’ okay?” Ethari asks. He pushes the door open farther. “Come in.”

“Thanks. I’m really sorry for bothering you. It’s just, there’s... something I have to talk to you about. About the coins.”

* * *

Teacher Nafai is tall and lean, closely resembling his younger brother but even moreso, to the point of looking decidedly _stretched._ His horns branch in several places, twisting into the air above his head -- in fact, where other elves wear a hood over their horns, Nafai has a hood with two buttoned slits at the top to accommodate them passing through it.

“And at all times, care was taken to--Yes, Young Master Ezran? What now?” Nafai acknowledges for the fifth time, with mounting impatience. His voice is soft but firm and constant, like a wheel on the road.

“Thank you,” Ezran says. All afternoon, something’s been cooking inside him, and the unvented steam of it is forcing its way out through his mouth, making him bolder. “My brother can do primal magic now. You know about that, right?”

“I don’t see how that’s related,” Nafai says, not through his teeth but not far off. 

Ezran can feel Ylai’s eyes on the back of his head but he doesn’t let up. “Well, you’re telling me that humans couldn’t live in the east because they were doing dark magic.”

“Yes, of course that could not be permitted, just as it cannot now.”

“Did anyone even _try_ to teach humans how to do primal magic instead?” Ezran pushes.

“I don’t--”

“Callum is a great brother, but he’s kind of a doofus sometimes. If he can do sky magic, there _had_ to be other humans who could do it at _some_ point, right? But I couldn’t find anything in the library books, _or_ your books, about it.”

Nafai sets down the paper he’d been reading from. Deliberately, he says, “The circumstances under which your brother learned primal magic are deeply unlikely, and impossible to replicate. Even if one _could_ repeat them, he _did_ do dark magic in order to achieve this result, did he not?”

“I mean,” Ezran hesitates. “If it’s just once--”

“ _Once_ is too much. Your brother’s great deeds have earned him forgiveness from Xadia, but that does not mean it was right. Indeed, if it had gone differently, you would have lost him, is that not the case? Would you condemn all families to such risk?”

Ezran frowns. “I... guess not. I just… I can imagine how scared they were, the people in the books. They just wanted to live. Doesn’t that make you sad? My dad always said there were wrongs on both sides. I _know_ humans have done bad things, at least, that’s what everyone tells me, but it seems like there’s not much in the books you brought about _their_ side of the story, or about any of the wrongs on the… the other side. With the elves and the dragons. No offense.”

“Your compassion and your desire for balance are admirable, these qualities will serve you well as a ruler. However…” Nafai sighs and takes a seat on the intricate stool that he always brings with him when he comes to teach. Softly, he says, “Young Master Ezran, is there any creature which is very common in your woods or your towns?”

“Uh,” Ezran thinks. “There are a lot of deer?”

“An excellent example. What do you think of the deer?”

“They’re cute, and uh… kind of silly. Like they’re not clever, but they’re funny, you know?”

“Ah,” Nafai smiles -- one of maybe three times Ezran’s ever seen him smile. “I forgot you can speak with them.”

“Anyway, yeah, I like them.”

“This may be a sad conversation. Please stick with it. You will need these skills as a ruler, do you understand?”

Ezran swallows. “Yes.”

“Imagine that there is not enough food for the deer in the forest one winter, they have eaten everything they can and they are dying of hunger. You have plenty of pasture land that is rich with their food, and they enter this land to graze. Do you allow them to stay?”

“Yes,” Ezran says. 

“So none of the deer die of hunger. In the spring, they do what deer do in spring: have babies. Of course, what do deer babies have to do to grow up?”

It takes him a moment to parse, but he sees where this is going now. “Eat.”

“And if the _previous_ population of deer cleared the woods of food before winter--”

“It’ll go faster this year,” Ezran says, monotone, dark and understanding.

“And if you wish to feed them, you’ll have to start sooner, and give them more. And if you do that--”

“I get it.”

“Do you? Because eventually those deer eat every twig and leaf and blade of grass in your pastures, and not only do you have no pasture for yourself, you now have nothing further to give to the deer, and they die of hunger anyway -- but now far, far more deer are alive to suffer because of your intervention. You and the deer are both worse off than you began.”

“But... People aren’t deer! I love animals, but it’s still different.” Ezran says. He can’t quite articulate any further, and frustration forms a hot, embarrassed tangle deep in his stomach. The comparison falls apart, he’s sure of it. There _must_ be a logical defense he can mount against this, he just can’t put it into words, and the harder he tries, the more the words seem to slip away from him, the more he wants to shut his mouth and never open it. 

There’s more to it, though, he can feel it. 

“They may not _be_ deer, but they don’t know any better,” Nafai claims, “they cannot sense or understand the balance of nature, because while they have the intelligence, they lack the link to a Primal Source. _Both_ are necessary to be a steward of this world.”

Ezran deliberately unclenches the fists he didn’t realize until now that he was making and looks down at the little crescents his nails made on his palm. “Is that why the dragons call us _lesser beings_?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“In one of the human books,” Ezran says, gaze fixed on his own hands. Eye contact feels impossible. He thinks if he tries he might go up in flames, or his eyes might pull free of his head to escape.

Nafai, fortunately, is not as fixated on eye-contact as Ezran’s human teachers used to be, and doesn’t seem to take this as a sign of disrespect. He looks out the window at the fading light for a long moment, and then says, “Yes. It was said, many times, by Sol Regem. Perhaps he should have been more tactful, but he is not a ruler often accused of undue gentleness. And yes, you have correctly identified the reason. And with that, I think it best if we end tonight’s lesson. I imagine you have a lot to consider.”

Concepts orbit one another in Ezran’s head. He _does_ remember to say thank you and goodbye, but just barely. Interrupting his thoughts like the beat of a drum is the heartache that’s been at the edge of his awareness ever since he read the letter from Hasima in Neolandia. 

It’s nearly supper, but he isn’t hungry. 

Narampu and Ylai, stationed outside the room during the lesson, re-enter. Or rather, Narampu re-enters while Ylai and his brother speak in their own tongue in the hall for a few moments.

“Good lesson?” Narampu chirps. “Did you ask some of those questions you mentioned?”

“I want to write to Callum,” Ezran says. He knows it’s not polite not to answer her, but this is too important. Then adds: “And Aanya.”

“Ah! Great plan, I’m sure they’ll be delighted. My handwriting’s pretty dodgy, but Ylai’s is lovely. He can take dictation for you!”

“No.” Ezran shakes his head. “I want to be alone. I want to write it by myself.”

The air in the room seems to chill. Narampu doesn’t reply for a bit too long -- especially for her. She draws a deep breath, but it doesn’t turn into words. 

“What?” It comes out of his mouth a little harsher than he means. 

Ylai’s back in the room, glancing between them at the obvious, sudden tension. 

“He wants to write a letter by himself,” Narampu says to Ylai. 

“Oh,” Ylai says. To Ezran: “No, you can’t.”

“What do you mean I can’t!?” Ezran shouts. The guards outside the door glance in for a moment. 

“Orders of the Queen Regent,” Ylai says, as though this is perfectly normal. 

Narampu has a winning idea, in Ezran’s opinion: “Why don’t we go and ask her about it? All together? I’m sure she had a good reason.” The last word comes out sounding like _raisin,_ and Ezran imagines, despite himself, a giant dragon-sized raisin.

“Perhaps we should not bother her,” Ylai cautions. “Especially after sundown, she is a little…”

He trails off and doesn’t finish, which Ezran has learned means he is trying to be negative and polite at the same time.

Ezran very much wants to ask her. He wants to ask her why he’s not allowed to write his own letters, and, perhaps more importantly, why the people of Neolandia are being left to starve. Philosophy aside for the time being, he can’t just let that happen.

“Tomorrow then,” Ezran says. 

* * *

Ethari sits on the stool where he’d normally work, while Callum perches on the edge of a large box. The sun has just begun to rise. Pinkish light pours through the trees and into the window behind Callum, making Ethari wince every time he looks up. 

“That’s really all?” Asks Ethari, after a very long time. “It seems too easy, like a trick.”

“I’ve… obviously never done it,” Callum admits. “So, I can’t make any promises. I don’t _think_ it’s a trick -- mainly because what the book said and what Lujanne said had some things in common.”

Ethari frowns. He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “I’ve heard of dark magic that brings back the dead, both for real and as walking corpse alike, but only in stories -- old ones. If what you and Lujanne say is true, though, then there is no death to reverse, it’s just…”

“Like opening a door,” Callum says, paraphrasing the book. _The difficult part is in building the door,_ it said before it was burned, _once that is accomplished, it is a simple matter to open it or close it._

“What did Rayla say?”

Callum doesn’t even bother to ask how he knew they’d discussed it. “She… kind of freaked out. She didn’t want to feel like it was in her hands. I get it, but Runaan was --is-- your husband. You deserve the chance to have your say, and if you don’t want that chance, like I said, just tell me to shut up and go away and I’ll never bring it up again.”

“How dangerous would it be to you?” Ethari asks, clearly beginning a kind of internal calculus. 

“I don’t know.” The words leave Callum with hardly any air behind them. Claudia was always fine, doing way bigger stuff. He sighs, and says, “My gut tells me I’d be alright in the end, but to be fair, my gut says all kinds of stupid things, so--”

Ethari chuckles at that. “To that, I can relate. Runaan used to tell me _Ethari, it’s a good thing you’re not an assassin, because your gut has shite for brains._ ”

“Elves and humans have the same idiom? About guts?”

“I guess we do. You know he’ll be furious. Saved by a human doing dark magic? He’ll hate it. I’m not sure if he’d want to be saved _._ ”

“That’s what Lujanne and Luna Tenebris said.” 

“And you didn’t listen,” Ethari says with a flash of a smirk.

Callum shrugs. “They don’t know everything.”

“What would _you_ do?” Ethari stares at the floor, as though counting the streaks in the wood grain. “Never imagined I’d be asking a teenage human for advice, but… If someone you loved was lost, and you could maybe get ‘em back but they might hate you for how you did it?”

“I’d do it.” When he blinks, it is his mother’s face painted on the backs of his eyelids. 

“That easy?”

“If I could have brought my mom back, even if she never talked to me again, she’d talk to my stepdad, when he was alive, and my brother, and my aunt. Even if _I_ didn’t really have her back, everyone else who loved her still would.”

A comfortable silence tarries in the room like a curious cat before moving on.

Ethari says, “I get the sense you _want_ to do it.”

Callum winces. He’d been hoping to avoid this conversation, but now that it’s here, he’s going to be honest: “Yes. They’re not _my_ loved ones, it’s not _my_ decision, and I don’t _want_ to _do dark magic,_ but I can’t help feeling like it’s kind of stupid to let three good people die to save two flowers and a bug.”

“That’s interestin’.”

“What is?”

Softly, Ethari poses, “That you call him a good person. For all we know, Runaan might be the one who killed your da’.”

“I know. Trust me, I’ve thought about that.” There’s another sigh. If either of his parents were here, he’d get a scolding. “Everything I’ve done since that night has been to end a cycle of killing and violence and hate. If I kept this spell a secret because of my dad, I’d be a hypocrite. Besides, you love him, and Rayla loves him, and that has to be worth something… right?”

“I hope so.” Ethari’s loose, misty-eyed smile hardens into an expression of steel. “I don’t want you to get hurt, but I couldn’t have married an assassin if I didn’t think a person’s life and limb were their own and no one else’s to gamble with or not. I’ll only ask you once: are you absolutely _certain_ you’re comfortable with the risk, on your end?”

“Yes.”

“Then meet me back here after moonrise.”

* * *

The new outbuilding for the Queen Regent is as beautiful as it is strange and imposing. It is in almost every way unlike anything a human would build -- it is made of stone and metal, and it is very large, but that is all it has in common with the main castle. 

The shared work of some of the world’s most powerful Sunfire and Earthblood mages, it is a pavilion more than a true building, as it is half-open, sides covered in irregular, hive-like window holes. The entire floor is polished obsidian, from magma that Scyntyllah herself manipulated, a perfect dark mirror of the world above it.

Asymmetrical, jagged, and wild, its shape gives the impression of having been carelessly grown rather than built. One would be forgiven for imagining that it was designed with the express purpose of making humans feel off-kilter.

At least, everyone _else_ seems to feel odd about it. Ezran actually kind of loves it. Every time he goes across the bridge and passes under the twisting archway, he gets a tingle that starts at the top of his head and raises goose-pimples down his arms. The world seems frozen, the sunlight trapped, like being inside a lung in the middle of a held breath.

At the core of an inner half-dome almost as tall as Katolis castle itself, Scyntyllah rests on a bowl-like dais, not sleeping, but doing something closer to meditation, as she previously explained. She stirs when Ezran enters, one huge blue eye opening before the other, blinking with a whitish sideways membrane. 

Her scales, mostly the deep red-black of embers, are speckled with clusters of gold like her sister’s, and the sun streaming through the side of the building at this time of day lights her like a fire. She lifts her long neck from the curl of her body, and when she re-positions her wings, a flash of glittering golden underside can briefly be seen. 

“Ezran,” she rumbles, and while her expression gives away little, the same mysterious connection that lets him speak to other animals gives him a glimpse of her emotions, a corner of pleased interest seen from the other side of a fluttering curtain. “How do you fare?”

She’s only being polite -- like most dragons, it isn’t her nature. He knows she only indulges pleasantries out of obligation and a desire for smooth interactions with humans, so he won’t waste her time. 

He steels himself. “ _I’m_ fine, but Neolandia isn’t.”

“Hmm?”

Ezran brandishes the scroll with Hasima’s seal. “This came from them. Soon they’re gonna be starving, and they said it’s because dragons aren’t letting them trade with Duren.”

“Hmm.” Scyntyllah’s eyes narrow, but not at Ezran -- rather at Ylai and Narampu. Her nostrils flare when she says, “I thought I was quite clear about official communications--”

“My fault,” Narampu volunteers, a little sheepish. “Picked it up for him at the aviary when I was sending a letter home, didn’t realize what it was. I thought it might be a…” she glances at Ezran, than back at Scyntyllah and stage-whispers, _“a love letter.”_

“I see,” says Scyntyllah. 

“I am sorry too,” says Ylai, “I also did not notice it.” 

When he bows, he leans only a little, with his head tilted up and to one side -- Ezran knows this is the way of the Branchfolk, Ylai and Nafai taught him to show respect by _horns back, neck exposed._ He knows how to do it now, though he feels a little silly since he doesn’t have horns to worry about.

“Anyway, I won’t do it again, promise,” Narampu bows in the way of the Rootfolk, with both fists touching just below the belly-button. 

Ezran speaks up: “None of that is important! We have to do something!”

_“Neolandia,”_ Scyntyllah’s disdainful rumble vibrates the glassy floor, “has refused to join the new authority, and spurned Duren’s offer of reconciliation. They will not forgive young Aanya’s actions in the battle, which I’m sure you will agree were necessary.”

“Yes,” Ezran does agree, “but--”

“So _why_ should Duren trade with them, if they will not forgive and move forward in good faith? Surely the intransigence of the princess and the king regent should not be rewarded.” Scyntyllah challenges.

“It’s not about that,” Ezran says, voice coming from deep in his throat. “She’s upset, she lost her brother, I’m _sure_ she’ll come around, but we can’t just let people go hungry in the meantime. We don’t know, maybe her people would want to cooperate with us, if they could. Shouldn’t everyone have a chance? Aren’t we trying to make the future _better?_ ”

Scyntyllah hums her consideration. “We are. You are right. War is over, the common folk should feel this. I will send messengers to Neolandia, with food and medicine and carts. After all, Katolis and Duren now live with such abundance, thanks to Fosso, any of their people who wish to live in the new peace are welcome to join us.”

“Really?” He’s almost thrown for a moment by how easy that was, but relieved to discover that she cares.

“Of course. As you said, they should have a chance to live. Perhaps mages can create modest housing for them, similar to what they did for me.”

“Yeah! It’ll be like…” Ezran smiles. “Little Neolandia!”

Scyntyllah’s gentle chuckle is like a storm far away. “Perfect. Little Neolandia it is.”

“Thanks. I was really scared you wouldn’t want to help them.”

“I would not have taken this post if I did not wish to help,” she points out, lowering her head toward Ezran. 

“There’s… actually one more thing. Why can’t I write letters by myself? I want to write to Callum, and Aanya, but...”

“Ah, yes. _Unfortunately,_ there have been reports of _interceptions_. We know, for example, that the Silvergrove attempted to inform Queen Zubeia of her son’s survival, but the missive never reached her.”

“Oh.”

“If you were to say something private in a letter, and such a thing were to be seen by the wrong eyes…”

“You see?” Narampu nudges him with a half-smile. “She just wants to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

“It is a fragile time,” Scyntyllah agrees. 

“I guess you’re right. I understand.” It isn’t what Ezran hoped for, but he can’t argue the logic. 

If anything, he feels a little guilty for doubting Ylai and Narampu, given how kind they’ve been to him so far. They flank him on the way out the door, and stop with him as he turns and waves goodbye to Scyntyllah. The letter-writing will be fine -- in fact, better than fine, because he’s got his crownguard to help him not make any mistakes. 

The first letter he has to write (or rather dictate) now is to Hasima, to let her know her people will be safe, that Katolis and Duren are ready to receive anyone who wants to go. He knows it’s not the support she might have hoped for, but it’s a good solution, a fair solution. 

He hopes his dad would be proud. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to make a couple of notes here about some choices I made. I am an immigrant, and a lot of the "stranger in a strange land" scenes in this chapter, and earlier ones, and ones to come, are informed by that perspective (both my own and that of those close to me.) I talk on a daily basis with people with a wide range of second-language English levels, and some of their most common constructions (and mistakes) have been (and will continue to be) borrowed for Ylai. 
> 
> On a similar autobiographical note, if you read the Ezran POV passages and wondered if I was implying that he might lean neurodivergent in some way, yes, indirectly. This chapter actually fought me really hard because I've never felt like I'm much good at writing kids but it seemed important to get a feel for the experience he's having, to compare and contrast the kinds of isolation he and Callum are each feeling. I ended up getting through it mostly by extending patterns from canon with things that match from what I remember of how it felt for me to be that age.


	7. Book Four: Earth | Chapter Seven: Petrography

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“The grags came down heavily on those who did not conform and seemed not to realize that this was like stamping potatoes into the mud to stop them growing.”_   
>  **― Terry Pratchett, Raising Steam**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like it known that if I were actually making season 4 of the show as I am daydreaming about in writing this, the role of Sal would be played by Lucy Davis (doing her best New Zealand accent, of course.) Just so you know what it sounds like in my head.

**Book Four: Earth**

**Chapter 7: Petrography**

_That_ one’s a teacup with a hand holding it.” Claudia points to one of the purple-gray clouds that meander across the deep blue blanket of the night sky. 

They’re well-clear of the trees, and have been at this cloud-identifying business for much of the night, passing the time and easing the nerves inherent to crossing open terrain. 

Their path snakes through stony foothills, and the wind is at their back, passing by and making silver streaks in the grass and bending the hardy wildflowers that grow in patches among the pebbles on the slopes ahead. Daybreak isn’t far, but neither is the first mountain in the chain, and if they can get into the woods there, they’ll be safe again, more or less.

“I see it,” Aaravos says slowly, chin tilted up so far that he could almost scratch his own back with his horns. He’s smiling, and not like a snake that’s caught a sparrow for once. Indicating with a long, orange-pink finger, he adds, “And there’s the steam rising from the cup, there--”

Viren’s eyes flutter shut for a step, and when he opens them, he sees a cloud of his own resolve into a shape, but he never gets a chance to call it out. The puff of vapor is rent in two by something darting straight through it and leaving a wake of clear sky behind. It is an arrow through a throat, it is a thread through a needle.

It is none of these things, because it is a dragon.

The pale white belly and underwing means it’s almost certainly Moon-linked -- any illusion they can cast will be shredded under its eye. All they can do is flee, so no one has to _say_ to run. They all know.

Viren’s leg has been having a lot of good days, which is a small blessing as they all take off through the curving valley between the inclines. By silent agreement they head for the spot where the first mountain begins its upward stab through the earth. There are scattered trees there, and shadows around the lower portion suggest the presence of crags, boulders, and overhangs. If they’re lucky, there’ll be somewhere to take cover, and if they’re _very_ lucky they’ll reach it in time.

At a dead sprint, Aaravos is the fastest of them by far. There’s no reason to begrudge him rushing ahead -- he’s unarmed and probably the likeliest of all of them to enrage a dragon on sight. If he can get himself to safety on his own, all the better to have one less fragile, unpredictable piece on the board. 

Claudia is obviously choosing not to run as fast as he _knows_ she can, looking back every few steps. Viren doesn’t waste his breath on telling her to hurry up.

A second shadow passes over the moon, followed by a third, these ones darker, lower. Earth dragons? He’s too focused on the path ahead to be sure. It is a run, but one footfall at a time -- little stones scrape and roll disconcertingly under his feet. 

Hubris, that’s what it was to relax for even a moment, they should have been bolting the second they got out from under the trees. 

From above comes a spectacular _crash_ that vibrates the air and the ground alike, and sends Viren tumbling into the rocks on the hillside. As he slides, clothes streaked with dirt and hands bloodied, the dry thought wanders through his head that the shockwave has at least thrown him forward, rather than back. 

The mountain is so near now, and nothing has descended on them yet -- he ventures a look behind him. 

He is just in time to see the second hit: the first Earth dragon (he’s sure that’s what it is) darts through the sky, gems glinting on its dark flesh. Its target, the Moon dragon, tries valiantly to evade the strike but the first blow must have left it addled -- it moves too slowly and takes the full force of the collision. 

The Moon dragon goes slack and begins to fall out of the sky.

Rather than get up and fall down again, he simply braces for the pressure wave from the second attack, which comes like a thump to the chest and is gone. 

“Dad, come on! Hurry!” Claudia’s voice cuts through the chaos.

Her hands tug at his elbow, urging him up off the ground, just as the second Earth dragon turns the great serpentine triangle of its head to face them. 

They are spotted. 

Viren lets himself be pulled to his feet and they’re off again. An unnatural wind off leathery, beating wings buffets them, pushes them along. Up ahead, Aaravos vanishes beneath a shadow. 

Behind, one of the dragons bellows. Whether it can’t speak or doesn’t want to doesn’t matter at all. It lands, and the ground trembles. Claudia trips, catches herself, presses on. 

Looks back.

“Go!” He shouts to her, and then faces the beast. He doesn’t look back to see if she’s following his order. 

His fingers tighten around the eclipse staff, and he reaches for the deep black well of power inside the sphere. Like water drawn by paper, crawling up the side of a glass, it seeps into him at a touch. 

The rune and the matching word aren’t anything he learned from a book. This is one that Aaravos taught him, whispered into his ear. The magic raises a shadowy shape like an hourglass knocked on its side, one cone of power extending forward to impede the dragon’s progress, and a matching cone behind.

In the eye of that storm, Viren stands, bracing both sides, stepping slowly backward toward safety.

The Earth dragon cannot maneuver forward. It snaps and growls, but if it wants to reach him, it has to back up and go around the shape of the spell. 

Each shove and thrash on the walls of the magic is like being grabbed and shaken. Has Claudia gone? He hopes so, unsure of how long he can hold his focus. If the creature is smart enough to rattle him and wait him out instead of going around (and giving him the distance he needs to run) he’s sunk. 

One judder, and another. His palm sweats on the metal and makes it harder to hold. The dragon raises one heavy claw and slams it against the shivering ground, but it’s telegraphed, and Viren is ready for it. 

Still, it is not a perfect stalemate. It is like blowing out a breath bit by bit, until there is nothing left. The corner of his vision goes gray, and there’s that familiar overextended lurch in his stomach that always comes before unconsciousness.

That is, until there isn’t. 

Warmth floods his muscles, his skin, his blood. The power is electric all the way to his bones. Claudia’s right hand is on the staff and her left is on his shoulder, her eyes lit from within by magic. 

The spell is stable, and the dragon is _furious._ The other Earth dragon stops its circling overhead and comes down for an attack just as this one retreats to go around the barrier at last. 

Just when their pursuer is at the most distant edge, they drop the spell, and flee. 

The diving dragon crashes to the ground, talons digging into the soil, but they’re already gone from the impact zone. The other just barely avoids hitting the first in the charge. The tangle gives them _just_ enough time.

Like cockroaches, Claudia and Viren scurry into the shadow of a narrow hollow in the rock. Aaravos reaches from the darkness and pulls them forward, ushering them both farther into the little cave-space. Outside, the rage of two Earth dragons shakes and batters the mountain, giving the impression of being inside a beaten drum. There’s nothing for it but to drop to the ground inside and cover themselves with a shadowy forcefield, breath held.

The entrance to their hole in the wall collapses, boulders and rocks tumbling into place. 

More voices join the chorus of dragons outside, at least two more by the sound of it, but the collective screech and rumble gets farther away, rather than closer. 

It feels like an age, but is probably only a few minutes at most before it all stops.

“Dad?”

“Fine, I think,” Viren says, too loud over the ringing in his ears. “Claudia?”

“I’m good,” Claudia says. 

“Aaravos?” 

“Nice of you to remember I’m here,” Aaravos jabs, clearly fine. 

“Claudia, I _told_ you to run,” Viren scolds, now that the immediate danger has passed. “Seems ignoring instructions is becoming a _habit_.”

“Only when they’re stupid instructions,” she mumbles under her breath, all insolence. 

“You might as well tell a heron not to fish,” Aaravos cuts in, unnecessarily defending her.

“Now _you_ sound like--nevermind.” Viren snipes at Aaravos, because sure, this is what he really needs right now, for the two of them to team up against him. After a beat, he lets it go, because it worked out in the end and there is a higher priority. He snaps his fingers against his palm and sheds some light on the situation. 

Claudia follows suit.

The entrance they came through is truly and completely destroyed, little more than a wall of stones. What they’d assumed was the back of the cavern, however, is revealed: not the dead end it had first seemed to be.

Instead, there is a low, squat aperture, through which they have to crawl to pass, but only briefly.

“The edges are worn smooth,” Aaravos comments as he flattens himself to get through, a tight fit for him. 

The passage beyond is just barely tall enough for Aaravos to stand without hunching, and wide enough to walk two abreast. More importantly, the walls meet the floor and ceiling at sharp angles. It is not a tunnel but a _hallway_ , cut into the rock of the mountain on a fairly harsh slant downward. At the edge of his own light, Viren thinks he can see where it turns into a staircase.

Viren cautions, “This isn’t a natural--” 

“What is _that!?”_ Claudia interrupts, darting past him, holding her own palm-light up to a spot where the ceiling meets the wall up ahead. “Glass? But what’s this inside--”

“Ssh!” Viren hisses, and then whispers, “As I was _saying,_ this is _obviously_ not a natural cave. Something intelligent made this. Unless you’d like to be out of the frying pan and into the fire, we should probably keep quiet.”

“Okay, but _look,_ ” she whispers back. 

The object, no bigger than a fist, resembles a potion bottle in shape, one end like a tube and the other end bulbous and ovoid, with a pinched tip. It is suspended from the top of the wall by a metallic thread that enters through the tube side, which is otherwise sealed and covered. Inside is a dark coil of yet more metallic thread. 

Against his better judgment, he touches it, and finds it shockingly light and fragile. If he were to drop it, say, against the wall, or even squeeze it too tightly, he’s certain it would shatter.

Viren shines his light down the corridor only to discover that the thing is not unique at all. The coppery thread that it hangs from continues all the way down the corridor, with the little glass baubles hanging every few feet. 

“Pardon?” he asks, startled when he finds Aaravos _directly_ behind him, leaning over his shoulder to examine the thing with narrowed eyes. 

“Fascinating,” is all Aaravos says at first. He practically leans on Viren’s back when he reaches across to touch it. “I know where we are.”

“Well?” Viren and Claudia chorus, impatient.

“...Delicate craftsmanship, this far East, beneath a mountain? Can only be--”

A noise down at the other end of the tunnel -- stone on stone, and a creak, followed by the clatter of footsteps on a staircase. 

“--A very specific sort of Rootfolk,” Aaravos finishes, as the sound grows nearer. 

“We’ve got company,” Claudia says, dipping her hand into the pouch at her hip. 

“Not at all,” Aaravos contradicts. He faces down the corridor, relaxed and smiling. If he had pockets, his hands would be in them. “We _are_ company.”

The Rootfolk elf that comes up the passage is short, wearing too-large clothes, her gray-speckled face unlined but slightly sunken. As with many elves, her age is impossible to tell. She is mildly out of breath, and in one hand, she carries a small torch, its light reflected off faceted, crystalline horns.

She is alone, which is probably the strangest part of it all. 

With only mild caution, she looks them up and down. The suspicious frown with which she regards Aaravos turns to narrow-eyed surprise when she looks at Viren and Claudia -- their heads, their hands. Between the eclipse staff and the mage-light, it’s not exactly possible to hide what they are.

But all she says is, “You’re Children of Elarion, then?”

“They _are,_ ” Aaravos says, as if sharing a delightful secret with her. 

“We’re _also_ capable of _speech,_ ” Claudia hisses at him. 

“Glad some of you are out there still.” She addresses Claudia and Viren, nodding toward Aaravos. “And what’s _he_ to you? Guide? Guard? Prisoner?” Her accent makes the last word come out like _prizna._

“Friend,” Viren chooses, though all four options have at least a kernel of truth to them. Over her head, Aaravos gives him a sarcastic fake-simpering look. 

“He’s alright, then? Not gonna be a problem?” She’s glancing back and forth between Viren and Claudia. It takes a moment to parse what’s happening: an _elf_ is asking a couple of _humans_ for confirmation that _another elf_ can be trusted. She turns to Aaravos, and stares up directly at him, unafraid. “We’ve got enough problems already, as you probably noticed out there. Dragon spies are about the last thing we need around the place.”

“I assure you,” Aaravos says, “I hate them as much as you. Look--” he pulls up his black sleeve to show the state of his arm, only lightly dusted with faint stars, hardly any more since he came out of the cocoon.

She recoils. “You’re Startouched!? But--but--what in blazes _happened_ to you? Aren’t you supposed to be...” The elf makes a finger-wiggling gesture up and down her own arm.

He leans closer to her. _“Avizandum happened to me.”_

“Cripes. Poor folks, you’ve really been through it, eh? Well, come on now, we haven’t got much but we can’t exactly turn you away and leave you to the bastards out there can we?”

“Oh uh…” Claudia hems and haws for a moment, before saying, “They… that door is... it’s gone. I’m really sorry. I guess it’s kind of our fault.”

The elf only shrugs. “Figured as much, from all the racket. S'alright. Follow me--I’m Salini, by the way, you can call me Sal. Welcome to Kannati, or what’s left of it, anyway.”

Aaravos follows her at a pace that might be called _jaunty_ , and after a quick silent conference in glances, Viren and Claudia trail behind, everyone making their introductions as they descend into the darkness.

The engineering alone is a phenomenon. Despite the fact that they are obviously deep beneath the surface of the mountain, a consistent breeze seems to carry air past them toward the surface along tiny vents that pockmark the ceiling and upper walls, little holes squiggling away into the rock. The temperature is comfortable, and each breath is fresh -- no dank, mildewed dungeon, this. 

At the bottom of the stairs, a two-story frame holds an intricately carved and sculpted arch with rune-engraved spandrels.

Beyond it, the walls are even more well-manicured, made of smooth, polished stone, cool to the touch. Those same glass decorations line these walls too, but rather than dangling from metal string, they sit in little recesses in the rock, bulbous-end up.

At the end of the corridor, the walls seem to fall away, and what remains is like a cavern, so huge it seems as though the mountain itself could be hollow, false as that must be. Soft light streams in through cut panels in the smooth arc of the distant ceiling, and circular mirrors the size of houses bounce it all the way down to the much-dimmer ground. 

The sun must have come up.

“Seems like we went pretty far underground, how is the light coming in?” Claudia asks, pointing at the openings. 

“Yeah,” Sal says, “The tunnels up there are lined with more mirrors. May not have any mages left, but that kind of magic still works.”

They stand at one end of a winding bridge (dotted with more glass-and-metal-thread ornaments on low posts) separating two pools of clear, blue water. At the other end is a cluster of stone-and-copper outbuildings with concave-sloped roofs, all crowded around a towering palace complex easily three times the size of Katolis’ own castle. 

“This is _so_ beautiful,” Claudia says, genuinely delighted. 

That gets a wistful smile from Sal. “Nice to hear. You’ll have to tell me how in Xadia you made it all this way, but anybody who’s about’ll want to know too, I’ll spare you having to tell it twice. Anyway, I hope you like it, ‘cause... well... and I really do mean this in the nicest possible way… you’re probably gonna die down here.”

“Wait, what--” Claudia is the most coherent of them, with Aaravos and Viren both making choked noises. 

“I know, sorry, sorry.” She makes a dismissive, _nothing-for-it_ sort of hand gesture. “You’re welcome guests, of course, but unless you’ve got some way of blasting a hole in the side of a mountain and killing probably twenty or thirty dragons, I’m afraid you’re as trapped as we are. Just wanted to get that out of the way.”

Aaravos puts a hand up to pacify Claudia and Viren, and then steps up beside Salini. “Tell me,” Aaravos asks Sal, “Is Elisaichelvi still alive, by any chance?”

“You knew Ma’ Chel?” Sal stops in her tracks at the castle-side of the bridge, making everyone else stop too. “What did you say your name was again?”

“Aaravos.”

“Right, Aaravos, well… I think you might be expecting something you’re not gonna get. Kannati’s dead, man. There’s maybe a hundred of us left, and most are petrified--” At the looks of confusion, she clarifies, “--Hibernating, to save resources. We take turns. Ma’ Chel was my grandmother, and she was our last last mage. She died probably a hundred years back, when I was a girl. If we _had_ a mage, we wouldn’t _be_ in this situation.”

“And… what situation is that, exactly?” Viren nudges.

“Your Startouch _friend_ doesn’t tell you much, does he? What was his name again?”

“I don’t... _know_ very much,” confesses Aaravos, irritably. “At least, as far as the last three hundred years are concerned.”

“Well come in and have something to eat, rest your feet, and I’ll make a long story as short as I can,” Sal says, leading them up the steps and into the palace, through once-glittering chambers beneath sweeping ceilings, held up by ornate columns, all as empty and silent as a tomb. 

* * *

The atmosphere of the palace is eerie in a cool way -- by the time her eyes have adjusted, Claudia can already get a sense of things, and she struggles to keep up with Sal as she gets distracted wanting to treat the place like a museum. What’s more awesome? A working elf castle, or this, the remnants of one, with all its mysteries for her to explore? She can’t decide. 

Greasy films of dust make caps for all the little glass ornaments everywhere, and it lays in sheets on the cylinders, coils and tubes along the walls. Everything is gray with it, in the dim light of the small fires about. It’s strange, even her home, a human castle, had a few magical lights in it. How does an elf palace not have a single one? In rooms that might once have been parlors, shattered pieces of mirror lay in piles, and bats nest in crevices.

Despite all that, it isn’t exactly dilapidated, beyond the surface level. For all that it at first struck her as an ancient ruin, her second impression is that it’s really only a few days of dedicated cleaning and some decent lighting away from normalcy and comfort. 

Only a small piece of the expansive kitchens seem to be lived-in at all, and that’s their destination. Sal sets about stoking a fire and warming what looks like some kind of porridge. In the process, Claudia gets a brief look into one of what seems like a series of large larders lined with blocks of ice the size of horses. 

There’s not a little left in storage, but not a lot either. How long can they last, without going outside?

Realizing she has more than enough components in her satchel, Claudia offers to make up a batch of hot brown morning potion. It’s dark magic, but Sal didn’t seem especially bothered when she found them before, did she? After a quick description, Sal happily accepts, watching the process with interest. This one Claudia brews deliberately weakly, in the hope that they’ll be able to get some sleep before too long, somewhere. 

When Sal takes her first sip, her face lights up. “This is a new one on me, you mind making a little extra? Others’ll be up soon, it’d be a real treat for them.”

“How many?”

“I think we’ve got around ten or twenty out of hibernation right now.”

“Of course!” It’s an easy promise to make, because if they get out of here she’ll have no trouble finding more ingredients, and if they don’t…

Well, she doesn’t want to really consider that.

Over a meal and a potion, sitting by the hearth at a servants’ dining table, Sal tells them the story, as it was told to her.

To begin with, she paints a picture of the state of things, more than a thousand years ago. There were two cities: Elarion (of which Claudia has read) and Kannati (of which she is hearing for the first time from inside its palace -- though she’s realizing that some confusing passages in the history books may have been referencing this.) 

Not only does Sal describe them as allies, but absolutely besotted with one another -- both had a surplus of what the other desired, and their science-minded cultures were a natural match. Travel and trade between them was as common as anything. Rootfolk and humans even married sometimes, despite the difficulty in having children, and faced no trouble for living together. 

Where other elf cities shunned human magic, Kannati embraced it, using it to great effect to build upon what Earth magic was already capable of, and the mages of Elarion were happy to share with them. Together, they were achieving greater power and knowledge than either could have had alone. 

To Claudia’s mind, it sounds like some kind of paradise. She can picture the palace at its height, lively and full of magic, not hidden but right out in the open.

“And then,” Sal says with a sigh, “the dragons went and cocked it all up, about a thousand years ago. They wanted to end human magic -- called it _dark magic,_ acted like it was the end of the bloody world. Elarion was our closest ally, and here they were, destroying it and sending our friends and loved ones, into the west. All the other elves were falling in line, but,” she says with no small amount of pride, “not us.”

She goes on: “Rex Igneous tried to put paid to _that._ He gave us a clear choice. Follow orders, or he’d bring the mountain down. So what could we do? We said yes.”

“But?” Claudia sips her potion, leaning forward over the table. This isn’t the end of the story. “I mean, there has to be a _but_ there, right?”

“You bet there is. If you hate dragons, you’re gonna love this.” There’s a twinkle in Sal’s eye, and Aaravos’ too, making him almost childlike. Claudia realizes from personal experience that she knows that look: the face of someone excited for their favorite part of a well-known story. 

Sal describes a rebellion: small groups of Kannati Rootfolk, doing missions and strikes to undermine the dragons in any way they could. Each time, they’d be caught, and dragged back to Kannati, where Rex Igneous or his minions could say, _we found these rebels, what will you do?_ (Sal puts on a ridiculous, stuffy voice when she speaks for the dragons.)

And the leaders of Kannati would say, _oh no, rebels, how terrible, sorry about that, we’ll surely make an example of them and see they get what they deserve._

“And then as soon as the dragons were gone, we’d throw ‘em a party!” Sal cackles. “Went on like that for centuries. Ol’ Rex only woke up once every hundred years, he never quite caught on.”

“And then what?” Dad asks. “What changed?”

Sal says, “Kannati was famous for what our mages and craftselves could do when we separated stone into its parts. We made magnets, glass, metalstring--”

“Oh!” Claudia speaks up after she swallows a mouthful of actually-kind-of-decent porridge, “Is that related to those little glass balls everywhere?”

“Those are lightballs,” Sal says, with a faraway look. “All the power’s gone now, ‘course. Nobody left who can operate the starters. Anyway, three hundred years ago, the dragons came and asked us to make them this special magical mirror glass. Said they needed it to build a prison for one guy, ‘course we asked who’d you nab? Didn’t want to betray a friend.”

Dad almost spits, and Claudia realizes why a moment later, suppressing a gasp. Sal just goes on about how it turned out that the guy _was_ a friend, and a good one, so the leaders of Kannati said no. 

They knew it’d be the last straw for the dragons, so each mage took a portion of the population out to the mountains to start new Rootfolk villages.

“Ma’ Chel led the group what stayed behind. We’ve been here under siege ever since. Guardians, you might say.”

Claudia’s clutching her cup, eyes wide, and begins to repeatedly tap her heel on the ground. She wants to hum, but forces herself not to. At the same time, she and dad both look at Aaravos, who has gone still as the stone around them, three fingernails digging into his palm. 

Is it setting the cat amongst the pigeons? Maybe, but Claudia bursts out with the question, “So who was the friend? The prisoner?”

Sal frowns, pale-pink brows furrowing. “Couldn’t say. Whoever it was, the dragons wanted to erase him. Did some magic, made us forget almost everything about him. All we know is we liked him, apparently.”

“Who took the job?” Aaravos cuts in to ask, voice tight.

“Don’t rightly know. Never found out what happened. Heck, I don’t even know whether all the other parties made it out alive.”

“I’ve never met any,” her father prefaces, “but I’ve heard tell of rootfolk elves that still exist. Perhaps their scouting was successful. 

“Hey, wait, there’s a thought!” Sal responds, “Near as I know, the forgetting magic only works on elves. Do _humans_ ever talk about someone like that? The prisoner guy?”

“Oh for the love of--” Aaravos rolls his eyes and then closes them. He rests his forehead in his head.. “It was me. _It was me,_ alright? And _someone_ must have taken the job, because--”

There is a screech of metal on stone as Sal leaps out of her chair. “Bloody core! You said… Avizandum… _holy shit._ I’m so sorry, Aaravos -- won’t forget that name again--”

“Yes, you will.” Aaravos sighs. “You’ve forgotten it twice already.”

“Yeah, yeah that’s right,” says Sal, “Comes and goes… and I’m usually good with names… it really _is_ you, isn’t it? You were friends with Ma’ Chel. Well this is… It’s a miracle! You can save us!”

Claudia coughs awkwardly, earning a glare from Aaravos and an uncomfortable moment.

Sal’s face falls. “Why am I getting the sense that you… _can’t_ save us?”

“I’m still _in_ prison. This form is a… a window, at best.” He looks at his own hand with disdain. It’s an oversimplification, but easy to understand, when he adds, “Magically inert.”

Slowly, Sal sits back down. “I see. Well… For what it’s worth, we didn’t screw you over. I don’t _know_ who they got to make the thing, but it _wasn’t_ Kannati.”

Claudia looks around the room, and only then does she notice a few elves, crowded in the shadow of the doorways to halls beyond the little dining space. Whatever’s left of the population not hibernating, they must be waking up, watching, waiting for an invitation, perhaps. 

She steals a glance at Aaravos, who has the frozen expression of someone trying very, very hard to control his face.

Dad speaks up. “Salini,”

“Sal.”

“Sal,” he corrects, speaking cautiously, “What _exactly_ did you hope he would do? I ask, only because… as lovely as your city is, even in its current condition, and as kind as you have been, we _would_ like to be able to leave -- and it sounds like you would like that as well.”

“ _Without_ being squashed by dragons,” Sal adds. 

“Right,” agrees Viren. “We seem to be in a familiar situation, if your story is true -- your folk and humans, united in a purpose.”

She sits up straight. “That’s true. You two are mages, right? You any good at it?”

“Uh,” Claudia laughs, and then in a conspiratorial stage-whisper, “Actually? We’re awesome.” In her normal voice, she adds, “ _And_ we have the eclipse staff to help us! So? What can we do?”

* * *

Chel is dead, and Aaravos is a bit stuck on it. 

He’s stuck on a lot of things, at the moment. 

How long has it been since he was here? At least five centuries? It’s long enough he didn’t even realize where he was until he was already standing in the corridor, his finger to the unmistakable glass.

The others are talking. Yammering. Viren and Claudia, giving Sal an abridged history of the human side of the story, making mistakes because their books are full of errors. He doesn’t bother correcting them. None of it matters. 

If the city of Elarion was like a child to him, then perhaps it could be said that Kannati -- and Elisaichelvi (Chel, to him) herself -- was a sister. When he closes his eyes, it is all whole again, the way he knew it at the end: teeming with life and excitement, encrusted with gems and aglow with the lightning harnessed by the magnets and coils. 

The smells are fresh in his mind: minerals, smoke and ozone, and perfectly-seasoned hunter’s pot stews, broth perpetually renewed, boiling endlessly for a century or more. 

In his ears, as though it were still going, is the buzz of the “starter” devices and the lightballs they powered, and the music from the singing-box instruments, played without ever being touched. He watched these brand new creations introduced to the world for the first time, poised to change it forever, he thought, and now, in the blink of an eye, they are already broken down, useless, untouched in centuries. 

Aaravos can identify.

When he met Chel, she was around fifty, and her granddaughter is saying she died a century back, so that means--

Five hundred? A respectable lifespan for Rootfolk, but any comfort he takes in _that_ is stolen knowing how terrible it must have been for her at the end. With the dragons’ magic, she wouldn’t even have remembered him. He would be a void in the long memory of Chel and her contemporaries, an empty cut-out shape of of the role he played, with nothing at all of who he was, of their friendship. She died a prisoner in her own home, unable to so much as speak the name for which she gave up so much. 

Until that moment, he’d known her to be so brilliantly _conniving,_ forever scraping and bowing at draconic royalty, all while hiding a dagger behind her back. And yet, this one time, she took a stand, openly? Impossible as it is to do, he _wants_ to hate her for saddling him with this future, for standing in the path of an avalanche with her shoulders squared, in the name of purposeless solidarity.

And while he’s thinking of hate, it’s almost funny how just when he thought he had well and truly mined _all_ the hate for Avizandum within him, he has found a whole new vein.

He should be used to these things. He _should_ fundamentally understand that a glass is broken before it is even made, but he isn’t, and he doesn’t, and he can’t. On top of all the feelings stirred up, he also has a problem on a practical level: he’s no closer to knowing where he _really_ is.

“So, it was for nothing,” Aaravos mumbles, emerging gradually from his daze. His hands and his lips and the tips of his ears feel numb, like they’re stretching away from his body one cell at a time.

“What?” Viren frowns at the non-sequitur.

Aaravos stands up. He grips the edge of the chair in his fist, but he does not throw it. He doesn’t shout. In both cases, it is a near thing.

“This place,” he says, ears back, words coming out a snarl, which can’t be helped, “Came to _ruin_ , to protect _me_ , and it was all… for _nothing._ ”

He lets go of the chair and is gone from the room in three long steps. All that time alone, wishing for company, and suddenly he _needs_ a moment to himself, just a damned _second_ where he doesn’t have to twist his face into some acceptable expression.

What is hazy to his mind is clear to his feet, which learned these halls long ago and never forgot them. Now, they carry him down one corridor to the next, through an archive consumed with rot (too much for those who fled to carry, he imagines) and up a staircase with a balustrade so weak he nearly pulls it from the stone by accident.

Some places are dark, but his feet do not need light to find their way.

Through the twists and turns, he finds what he is realizing he was looking for, at the top level, all the way at the back where the building meets the cave wall. It is just as _gone_ as everything else, in a manner of speaking. 

The hallway is filled with rockfall, and before him at its end is a pile of near-solid stone. In a few places, he can see the borders between them, and maybe he can even pluck out a pebble or two, but even as he touches them in the gloom from the distant torches, he knows they will not budge.

What was a door is now a wall, and who knows how thick? Beyond it, does the mage’s library even still exist? Or has it all been smothered under the rubble?

This explains why no one has taken up the mantle of mage: if it even still exists, the knowledge required to break down this wall is _behind it_. Chel was the last, apprentice-less, bearing the weight of her world on her shoulders alone. 

Frustration twists somewhere inside the stupid meat golem he’s already far too used to piloting. His fingers _want_ to draw the runes that he could use to sound this wall and gauge it, to cut into it. His tongue wants to say the words. 

Instead, he just stands before it, hand on the dead rock, caught between his memory, and his imagination, and his reality, trapped in a whole new way. He isn’t _here_ in the way that matters.

When he was cut from that pupa, he expected his biggest problem would be if his jailers discovered what he was up to, but now he’s fairly certain that if they knew, they’d only laugh. _Just like you to find a way to tighten your own noose,_ they would say, without ever actually speaking to him out loud.

“Aaravos?” Viren’s voice comes from down the hall and around the corner, finding him like cool water finds a burn. Aaravos adds it to the detailed catalogue he is keeping in his mind of every time his name has been spoken since the day his seamless sentence was so delightfully disturbed. Instantly he is shaken from his spiral. 

He _can_ hear others speak, and they do say his name, and even that much is lovelier than his lonely room. It was stupid to question that even for a moment. 

“Ah, there you are,” Viren says, shining his palm-light down the dark hallway ahead of him. “You weren’t easy to follow. What’s this?”

“This,” Aaravos indicates, “is the way out, both literally and figuratively.”

“Speaking in riddles, you must be feeling better already.”

“Tell me, humans love pointless noble gestures that get them killed. Didn’t _you_ lose someone in a similar fashion?” It isn’t the question he actually wants the answer to, but it’s a placeholder.

“I thought we were discussing the way out.”

Aaravos chuckles darkly, despite himself. “It’s no wonder we get along so well.”

“And here I thought it was because my strings were so easy for you to pull,” says Viren dryly, kneeling to examine the edges of the rubble, searching for weak points. “Give me a hair.”

“You know, that potion I showed you doesn’t actually _do_ anything,” Aaravos at first ignores the request in favor of a confession, apropos of nothing. “Only the blood was required. The potion was to make sure you were clever enough to make it, but stupid enough to drink it.”

“That must be why it tasted alright,” Viren deflects the blow beautifully, refusing the bait to anger. He steps away from the wall and regards Aaravos with bland impatience. “Now are you going to give me a hair off your head so I can try something, or would you rather linger in the corridor and mock me instead?”

“You have a spell that uses _my hair?_ ” Aaravos narrows his eyes at Viren and the corner of his mouth quirks upward in amusement, given the sort of dark magic that generally uses that kind of component. 

Viren hisses a sigh through his nose. Is that a blush? Stiffly, he clarifies, “ _Any_ hair would do, but if it’s short, it won’t tell us very much, and _you’re_ standing here, for better or worse.”

A genuine laugh punches its way out of Aaravos as he follows a particularly long strand of hair back to his scalp and plucks it.

Viren drapes it across one hand. With the other, he pulls a small vial from his pocket, deftly removes the lid with his forefinger and thumb, and pours a single drop into his palm. Once the vial is safely capped and back in his pocket, he drags the hair through the drop of clear liquid.

An incantation makes it glow and begin to wriggle gently, as though alive. Viren pinches one end of the hair and gets to one knee, feeding the end into a crack between two stones. 

They wait as it inches forward, probing into the wall.

“Where is Claudia?” Aaravos asks.

“She has the eclipse staff. She’s more than proven her capacity to take care of herself.” He narrows his eyes as he searches Aaravos’ face. “I don’t know what is happening with you right now, but it almost seems like you don’t _want_ me to try and open this. What are you _afraid_ of?”

Aaravos pauses awhile, to figure out the pithiest way to put it, and answers, “A test of love.”

The hair goes slack.

“Ah! Success!” Says Viren, placing his fingers at the spot where the strand enters the stone and pulling gingerly until the entire hair has returned. “It isn’t caved in, or at least, there’s an open space, at any rate. We only have to clear… looks like less than a foot of stone. Now, will you tell me what’s in there?”

“ _If_ it still exists,” Aaravos hedges, “it would be a mage’s library containing a private door to the outside of the mountain. I suspect opening it is the _miracle_ our hostess wished me to perform.”

“A way out of the mountain, _and_ a way out of the siege.” He eyes the rock warily. “I have an idea, but she won’t like it. It’s... insensitive, to say the least.”

Aaravos thinks he likes it already.

* * *

Viren returns to find Claudia chatting happily with ten or more elves, acting as raconteur to a delighted audience. After a brief conference, Sal offers them some relatively clean rooms to get a few hours rest. They’d walked most of the night before arriving in Kannati, after all, and there’s no ignoring how exhausted they are. Safe beds are a luxury they haven’t had for awhile. Claudia in particular seems delighted to sleep on a mattress, _any_ mattress. 

For his part, Viren is just looking forward to resting without keeping one eye open.

Before he retires, Viren takes Sal aside and explains his findings, and, more importantly, what would be needed in order to bring about the _miracle._

“Goodness,” Sal’s gray face goes grayer. “Bit grim isn’t it?”

“I thought you might say as much. Naturally we’ll understand if you need some time to think,” Viren allows, “especially given that success is far from certain.”

To appear pushy would be unseemly, given the circumstances. He has every intention to persuade her by whatever means he must, but he’s still hoping she’ll get on board with the plan by herself.

“I don’t,” she says. “I don’t need time. I’ll do it. I mean, obviously I don’t like it, but sometimes there’s only one path, right? Sometimes the choice is between bad and worse.”

Viren huffs a sympathetic laugh. “On that, we agree.”

“I’d ask if it’ll hurt, but I don’t suppose you’d know, would you?”

“I don’t know, no, but if I had to guess, I would imagine it will probably hurt.” It is the truth, and it is also a strategy. He's got her pinned as someone who would appreciate that kind of bluntness.

Sal nods. “Thank you, anyway. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. You go and get some rest, I’ll… see what my options are, method-wise.”

Viren sleeps much longer than he’d intended, though it’s hard to be sure how long exactly, and still wakes before Claudia does. With only a few wrong turns, he finds his way back to the kitchens, where Sal is sitting at the table. He notices right away that she’s done it:

Her left horn is gone, just a few inches above where it meets her skull, empty air where it bent back across her head, and she’s holding it in her hands. As much like crystal as it looked on her head, separated, it could easily be mistaken for an ornamental wand of cut quartz.

“It did hurt,” she says. 

“I’m… sorry,” is all Viren can think to say. He’s used elf horn in spells before, but only ever harvested from those who’d already perished -- assassins, mostly. To call it a strange feeling, _asking_ for a component of this type, from its original owner, would be an understatement. He tries to imagine it the other way around, if someone asked him for a finger, or an ear, what would make him say yes?

“It’ll be worth it,” she assures, though whether she’s assuring Viren or herself is anybody’s guess. 

Claudia, when she wakes, is a lot better than Viren is at managing Sal’s feelings -- she calls her brave, heroic, a credit to her family, things that are true but that, by virtue of having been the one to make the request, Viren has no ability to say earnestly. By the time the four of them reach the cave-in together, Sal seems braced and ready. 

“Alright, Ma’ Chel,” Sal murmurs, “this is for you. Isn’t that right, um--”

“Aaravos,” supplies Aaravos. “And yes. That’s right.”

The horn feels _alive_ in Viren’s palm. At first he thinks it’s because it’s so newly-severed (fresh, if he doesn’t mind being a bit gauche about it) but no, he’s felt _that_ before, and this is completely different. In the planning stage, he was iffy on whether it would work, but holding this in his hand now, he is completely sure that it will, even if he has no idea what awaits them on the other side.

Armed with that confidence, he starts at the top left corner and drags the tip of the horn down along the stone, saying the incantation once, then again from the bottom left to the bottom right, then again to the top right, and once more back across the top, to where he started: A full counter-clockwise tracing of what’s left of the doorway. 

The power comes so easy it feels almost like something’s wrong. It moves through him, into the stone, without the slightest resistance. When he’s done, he steps back.

The rockfall and the horn both dissolve into dust. 

“Yeah, dad!” Claudia cheers from a few paces back. She catches up to him quickly and places a hand on his back, as though he is some doddering relic. She half-whispers, “Are you okay? That seemed like a pretty heavy--”

He brushes her off. “Fine, fine. It’s nothing.”

Strangely, unexpectedly, that’s the truth. For all that this spell should have been intensely draining, he feels little different to how he started, just a bit of customary tension around his temples. If he passed a mirror right now, what would he look like? 

Viren leads the way through the doorway, holding his breath as he passes through the cloud of dust and rock powder. 

On the other side is a tall, round room that smells of gusts of fresh air and salt, and is lined with books and curios. A mezzanine (the first wood he’s seen here) splits the height, and from there is a staircase into darkness. One way or another, it most likely leads to the surface. All in all, the place could have been sketched fairly closely from what he would have expected an Earthblood elf mage’s library to look like.

His eyes stop on a small, round thing tucked between two books. A quick check suggests he's the first to spot it, so he approaches it as casually as he’s able -- behind him, Claudia and Aaravos and Sal have all fanned out, exploring the space, and he is driven to investigate before any of them realize just what he’s seen.

He blocks the shelf with his body as he lays a hand on what is, without the slightest doubt, an Earth primal stone. 

Beneath his fingers, he can sense it: a full-scale earthquake, trapped within.

It is creation as much as destruction. It is fissures splitting the ground, but it is also new islands rising from the sea. The wielder of this stone would have had access to all the power they needed to run this city and more.

Or, Viren thinks, all the power needed to destroy the border between east and west, to collapse the divide in on itself, to _bury_ the river of magma forever. Any remnant of the split could be erased, covered in grass and trees, the land united. The picture is as clear in his mind’s eye as if it were real. The power, the satisfaction, the victory… 

It’s intoxicating just to think about. 

No one’s even seen him touch it. Sal didn’t know, in any real sense, what was here. He could take it, and no one would be the wiser. 

And besides, despite her pedigree, she’s an _amateur,_ with no mentor. It would be the blind leading the blind if they tried to use it. Perhaps it would even be _safer_ in his hands. He would certainly be able to make much, much better use of it -- maybe even use that would benefit her people more than _she_ could, in the long run!

It isn’t as if he’d be taking magic from her entirely, she’s still innately linked to the Earth Primal, and inside a mountain she’d surely have _some_ ability to do spells, if she worked at it. 

His hand closes around the curve of the sphere.

The glass seeps warmth from Viren's skin, as a different set of thoughts crowds him. It is like swallowing bitter medicine to consider this stranger, impossibly hospitable to other strangers in the midst of a siege, free with food and drink and beds and stories, never thinking twice before offering something more, sitting at the table, her own sawed-off horn in her hands. He thinks of the mage who once ran this city, and died trying to save it from being destroyed or subjugated. He thinks of Aaravos, fumbling for meaning in someone else’s fruitless sacrifice. 

He sighs, grits his teeth, and says five of the most difficult words of his entire life. 

“Come here, I’ve found something.”

Placing it in Sal’s freckled hands is like giving away a baby, and he needs to step back as soon as he’s done it, closing his hands into fists reflexively to stop himself snatching it back again. 

A brief investigation reveals that the two books on either side are the mage’s notes and spells and instructions, a meticulous record of how the city was powered, and built, and maintained, how everything worked.

Sal holds the stone in her hand and, breath likewise held, tries a simple spell on one of the larger bits of rocky debris scattered around the edges of the room. 

It works: the rock breaks in two. 

“High five! Er… four!” Claudia offers. She leafs through the pages of one of the books. “Oooh, try this one--”

Viren watches from a bit of a distance, as Aaravos corrects Sal’s form and stroke order.

He is frozen, consumed by a single thought: if he can do that, just now, for someone he doesn’t even know, then he _has_ to be strong enough to tell Claudia the whole truth. He made a promise to let her in, to treat her with the respect she’s earned.

Aaravos said he was afraid that what awaited him in this room behind the stone wall would be _a test of love_ , and now Viren sees that he’s facing one of his own, one he’s been studiously ignoring with one justification or another.

From the moment he understood what she’d done, bringing him back, he knew there would be a debt, he just couldn’t see (or wouldn’t let himself see) what it was. 

This is it: He owes her the real chance to turn her back on him.

Sal turns back to him, glancing between Viren and his companions. 

“Will you stay?” She asks. 

“I’m not sure--” Viren begins to hedge. The humming, the call, it’s gotten louder as they’ve made progress, just as his curiosity has. 

“Wait,” Sal interrupts, before he can answer. “Please… it’s clear you folks know what you’re doing, and I could use a little… boost? Some lessons, maybe?” She laughs nervously. “You don’t have to stay long, just maybe a… a week or two, just until we can get the power on. I’m sure the dragons don’t know the mage’s door, so I promise the food’ll be better, and you’ll be safe from anyone looking for you.”

Viren’s knee jerk reaction had been to decline, but on consideration, she has a reasonable point. Having the _option_ to leave any time makes staying a much more pleasant prospect than it was when the place could become their mausoleum, and to linger would allow for a more complete disappearance. If they were being tracked, it could very well make their trail go much colder. 

“I’ll stay either way,” Aaravos declares with a dismissive wave of a hand, affecting breeziness, though Viren can guess there’s much more happening under the surface. Aaravos does what he wants to do, and he can’t even feel what’s pulling Viren and Claudia toward the coast -- of course he’d seize on the chance to not feel like luggage, for once. 

“I’m okay to stay if you are,” Claudia says with a faintly hopeful shrug, book in hand. “I kind of want to see the lightballs.”

She was so excited to see the ruins, and so happy to sleep in a real bed, and if he’s going to give her upsetting news, isn’t it better to do it someplace where she can storm off without marching into unnecessary danger?

"Very well," Viren says to Sal, “We’ll have to move on before the equinox, at the latest, but it does appear that we’ll be availing ourselves of your hospitality _just_ a bit longer.” 

Tomorrow, he thinks. 

Or, maybe the day after that. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I rewrote this chapter about three times. Originally it was going to bounce around like the other chapters did, but it just didn't feel quite right, plus this one is already the longest one yet I think, so all that extra material that wasn't part of this specific storyline has been shifted to the next chapter (hopefully that means less of a wait for that one, or so I pray to the muses.) Basically this episode turned into its own little sub-fic within the fic, which I hope was enjoyable, despite it being perhaps a bit weird and self-indulgent. After this, there's only two more episodes in "Season 4"!
> 
> Edited 3/27: Huge thanks to @outcastsnmagic on Twitter who created this beautiful work of art:  
> https://twitter.com/outcastsnmagic/status/1243357806306058240?s=21
> 
> 4/7: @outcastsnmagic has done it again with a spectacularly gorgeous and atmospheric rendition of the library: https://twitter.com/outcastsnmagic/status/1247266609733009408?s=21


	8. Book Four: Earth | Chapter Eight: Fault Lines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. [...] We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”_   
>  **― Anais Nin**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As long as I get my fantasy voice casting, can Tilda Swinton be Scyntyllah?

**Book Four: Earth**

**Chapter 8: Fault Lines**

In battle, there is always a plan, and the plan always falls apart. It’s written in books, it’s taught by trainers, and at this point, Soren has seen it at least a couple of times firsthand. Now it’s sinking in that peace isn’t so different.

_We will handle cases as they come in,_ the New Ministry of Justice agreed at first. They didn’t want people behind bars, if it could be avoided. After all, they aren’t exactly brigands and killers, are they? Most of them are just doing the same thing they did last year that was perfectly fine at the time. Corvus expressed concerns that if people were treated as evil, they would see _themselves_ that way, and be harder to reform. Soren just thought they should get a real chance to change before anything resembling a punishment.

That’s how Soren _has_ to think, in order to look at himself in the mirror, considering that but for a few quirks of chance, he’d probably be one of them. 

It’s just that there are a lot _more_ people being rounded up than expected. It only takes a few instances of Opeli’s (apparently very busy) agents waking the three of them in the middle of the night before everyone agrees that _the plan_ needs a holding area. 

No one wants to be the first to say the word _dungeon._

Instead, they describe the _features_ of a dungeon. Corvus recommends a place which isn’t too close to outer walls and escape routes, which is resistant to damage, Opeli notes that it should contain access to necessities sufficient that no one needs to go in and out too often, and that it should be isolated from other rooms. Everyone agrees it ought to have a drain in it, and the ability to be fastened securely from the outside. 

Once all that’s out in the open, there is a long pause. Despite himself, Soren is starting to learn in earnest how to read a room, or at least, how to read _this_ room. The understanding emerges, like little white pockmarks of milk curdling in lemon tea, clinging to its own kind in textured globs. 

They’re waiting for him to be the one to suggest dad’s old office.

So he says it. 

They agree, of course, in tones of surprise as though they weren’t already thinking it, even though they had to have been. 

As much as Soren would rather leave the work to castle porters and servants borrowed from other tasks, he wants even more to demonstrate that he and this room are not a part of one another. 

There was a person who ran here for comfort after nightmares, who sat at that desk to practice his arithmetic and carved his name in it instead, who was scolded for spilling a jar of something smelly and important that burned a hole through the carpet, who cried in distress when he accidentally trapped his little sister in an empty trunk here during a game. Soren _needs_ to prove that person is a stranger to him now, so he participates in dismantling it with as much relish as he can muster.

Whether that relish is real or not doesn’t matter. This is another one of the lessons he is learning, which might always have been true, but which is newly clear to him in a way he’d never processed in the past: the way things look matters at least as much as the way things are, often more.

Everything paper and leather and canvas goes into crates made of flimsy wood, assembled with pegs instead of nails, for easier burning. Furniture is taken out to be cleaned and repurposed elsewhere. It was going to happen anyway, surely, so why _not_ now?

At one point in the afternoon, the castle librarian comes up flanked by trunk-bearing porters, obvious distress on her face, wanting to salvage this and that and the other. “For the historical record,” she scolds, sharp-eyed and steel-shouldered, in the face of Opeli’s protest. “One cannot avoid repeating a thing not well-remembered and understood.”

No one can argue with that, even Opeli appears genuinely chastened, so they just stand there and let her take what she wants. 

The rest is carried away to destinations unknown. The painting of dad and King Harrow is removed, and Soren would swear he’s floating above his own body, looking down on a conversation about whether it should be stored or destroyed. Later, he will realize he has no idea what the final call was.

Opeli asks Soren who the other painting is meant to depict, the one with the girl and the sheep, and even though he’s sure he asked dad about it once, his memory fails him. At first it’s slated for removal with the rest, but for some reason, no one who looks at it can quite bring themselves to do it. 

Even the porters, _ordered_ to take it off the wall, approach it as if it is some beautiful person they are too shy to speak to, or as if it is a wild animal and might bite. Corvus, called over to help, regards it for a few seconds, and then says, a bit dreamily, “Why don’t we just leave it? It’s... soothing.”

Opeli looks at it, takes a deep breath, and agrees, in just the same tone of voice: “Yes. A homey touch. Good idea.”

The whole room lets out a breath of relief, and no one brings it up again.

When the job is done and the room is mostly bare, it is re-filled with cots, chamber pots, paper screens, and two basins of water -- one for washing, one for drinking. Two of the more stoic Sunfire agents are reassigned as guards, to remain here whenever it is occupied, and prevent any trouble. 

On the bright side, it looks more like a strangely-high-security hospital than a prison, and that’s not so bad.

The holding room gets its first group within hours, for hearings to be conducted that same night. Soren stands on the stones outside the door to watch them brought in -- seven people, signaling a long night ahead. Six of them are unknown to him, but when the last one crests the staircase onto the parapet walk, his heart stops, freezes, shatters into dust.

“Raum!?” The name is a choked question that darts out of his mouth before he can stop it, and in an instant, all eyes are on him, _especially_ Raum’s. (Raum’s are suddenly the only ones he cares about: irises like honey sea glass hanging in a sun-drenched window.)

Distracted, Raum trips over the top step. His body swings away from the Moonshadow agent holding him by the right upper arm. He very nearly goes down hard on his left side, russet curls covering his face. It’s a strange-looking fall, and it takes Soren a moment to parse why he doesn’t catch himself: he can’t. His left arm is gone, amputated well above the elbow.

The guard digs a meaty, four-fingered hand deep into the flesh of Raum’s shoulder to pull him back to his feet, helpful, but not very nice about it. Raum draws a quick breath through his nose and whips defiantly around toward the agent, but seems to think better of saying anything.

“Uh, listen,” Soren walks alongside the elf on the march toward the holding room. “I think there’s some mistake. You… you got the wrong guy.”

_“Didn’t,”_ comes the response. 

“Just go on with the others. Let me talk to him for a second, okay?” Soren appeals.

“Belongs here, _with_ the others. What, ye have a little _crush_ or somethin’?” The agent’s accent is heavy, and he’s huge, easily a head taller than Soren, but that doesn’t change one thing--

“I don’t know if you’ve forgotten,” Soren says, coming around to stand in the agent’s path and stopping his progress altogether. Chin forward, he speaks calmly, firmly, inexorably, in a tone that sounds to his own ears as though he’s possessed by his father’s ghost. “You work for _me._ ”

The agent’s blue-marked jaw shifts as he clenches his teeth. It’s an incredibly stupid staredown, but not one Soren intends to lose. The moment is thick enough to slice into pieces.

“Fine,” he says, and it comes out more like _feign,_ the way he says it. Those axe-head hands open with a kind of forward nudge that causes a second stumble. “On your own head be it, then.”

And just like that, they’re alone, more or less. 

Raum’s changed a tiny bit -- a shade more tanned, a touch more muscular, and he has a certain steel about him that Soren doesn’t remember -- but to look at him is to be taken back in time nonetheless. Their last meeting (not that Soren had any idea it would _be_ the last) was two years ago, but it suddenly feels like yesterday.

The truth isn’t that _he has a little crush_ , as the guard accused.

The truth is that he _had_ a _colossal, world-encompassing_ crush, the first he can ever remember. 

Their first meeting is a blush-inducing lightning-strike of a memory: Soren, not-quite-twelve years old, training in the upper bailey. Raum, newly-thirteen, at last given the weighty responsibility of deliveries from his father’s dairy farm to the castle, gently driving two roan horses through the gate ahead of a cart laden with wheels of cheese, blocks of butter, and rattling, clinking bottles of milk. 

The scene is painted in Soren’s mind with blooming watercolors -- a single smile that set in motion a three-year obsession. It was a friendship forever tinged at the edges with the firelight-warmth of infatuation, marked by endless excuses and shared conspiracies to get their paths to cross.

Close as they might have tiptoed to some invisible line, though, they never quite crossed it. Would Raum have wanted that? Or was it an ordinary friendship to him, the possibility of something else existing in Soren’s mind alone? 

One day, with no warning, the most mundane of tragedies struck: Raum’s cousin abruptly took over the deliveries. While Soren knew he’d probably be welcome if he turned up at the farm, his intentions would surely be obvious then, and his young ego couldn’t bear the risk. He went back and forth in his own mind about it until it seemed too much time had passed, and he resigned himself to moving on.

He realizes that his hand is still on Raum’s elbow, and abruptly retracts it. 

“Just tell me what happened,” Soren says, “I can talk to Opeli, whatever the misunderstanding was, I’m sure we can fix this.”

“No need,” says Raum. His voice is rougher than Soren remembers, like something dragged over gravel, and as he speaks, he looks out across the distant treetops rather than making eye contact. 

“What do you mean, no need?” Soren presses. “I’m sure you’re busy at the farm, there’s no way you have time for this, and c’mon, I know you, you’re not… _like that._ You don’t _need_ the whole school thing.”

“I’m not like what?” His eyes narrow, his head tilts away from vertical, giving him the overall look of a fox hearing a strange sound in the distance. “ _..._ School?”

“The school,” Soren says, words chopped to pieces. “You know, for people who… don’t understand what’s going on. Where you learn how to… live in the world… now that the war is over and...”

It sounded so smart when everyone else said it to him, why does it sound stupid coming out of his own mouth? Why doesn’t Raum know about the school? What are the elves _telling_ people? He wishes he could say what he’s thinking, which is, _you probably deserve to live in safety and peace more than I do._

Raum looks _through_ him until Soren meets his eyes, and is trapped there, the gaze making him feel like a carcass on display in a butcher shop.

He has so many questions, and they’re balled up in his chest and they can’t get out.

Finally, Raum glances around and places his hand on Soren’s forearm. “It is a comfort to see you are doing well for yourself, but we hardly know one another. Whatever social capital you have should not be wasted on such a case.”

“Please,” Soren says, throat dry. He knows Raum’s expression well enough, he’s seen it on his father a thousand times: _the walls have ears._ But why would he be thinking about that? Why would he care? “There must be something I can do.”

“If you must--”

“Yes.”

“The _elf_ didn’t let me speak with my family before I came here. They don’t know where I was, or where I am now. It would look like I just disappeared. They must be worried.”

Soren nods rather than speaking, certain that if he tried, the words would come out humiliatingly garbled. Neither of them have to say that the conversation is over. 

* * *

Ethari is late. 

There’s no clock in the workshop, so Callum has no idea how long he’s been awkwardly sitting cross-legged on a trunk by himself, hoping that no one who _isn’t_ Ethari comes in here and asks questions. The moon is solidly over the treeline when footsteps come clattering up the staircase outside. 

Heavy, which is a good sign. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Ethari excuses as he comes through the door, half-slamming it behind him. He holds up a bag. “I’ve got everythin’, let’s go. Follow me, and keep quiet.”

The moment they hit the bottom of the stairs, Ethari leads the way directly into dense wood, well off any path. With a sharp blade that Callum imagines he probably made himself, he walks a step ahead, slicing through brambles and scrub. There’s no conversation to be had, just the sound of snapping twigs and swishing leaf litter. 

Callum considers, after tripping over a log or a rock for the fifth time, that if he somehow died out here (or was killed) no one would ever find his body.

“Here--” Ethari indicates ahead. 

The clearing is almost perfectly circular, completely devoid of any plant life aside from the soft clover that covers the ground, and the small mushrooms that form an inner ring. Above, the sky is clear. It might be for the best that they were late, with the moon closer to overhead than before. 

“What is this place?” Callum asks. 

“Different elves have different names for them. We call ‘em silverpools, places where Primal energy of all kinds tends to eddy -- like when water swirls in a river before movin’ on. You said the soil had to be good, no place better than this. They’ll be looking for us soon,” Ethari advises, “whatever we’re doin’, let's be quick about it. We shouldn’t be here.”

“Right,” Callum answers, and then, to himself, bracing, _“Right._ Okay. Are you sure you don’t want to... I don’t know, go and come back? Pretend you found me and I did it by myself?”

Ethari laughs. “I hope I don’t strike you as the type.”

“No! Not at all. I was just thinking--” Callum’s not sure why his mind went there. “I’d back you up, is all. No reason we _both_ have to get in trouble.”

“No, if they’re gonna run you out of town for doin’ dark magic, they’ll have to run me out as well,” Ethari squares his shoulders. “Bad enough I ghosted Rayla. I willnae leave you in the cold too, even with your blessin’. I want to do this, I gathered the ingredients, I’ll stand by it.”

“Okay,” Callum says. 

Shared trepidation seems to steal the air from around them. As the book instructed, he digs three small holes in the black soil with his fingers. With the excavated dirt, he makes three mounds well apart from one another.

Next, to prepare the coins: The first flower is opened, and a coin placed at the center of its petals, and then it is wrapped in the second flower. The whole bundle goes in a divot in one of the piles, and the process is repeated for the other two coins. 

Standing in the center of the triangle, Callum holds a fat, yellowish wriggling thing with a lot of legs and two long, soft antennae. _Sorry, little dude,_ Callum thinks. _It’s for a good cause, promise._

What he knows about dark magic is this: it is a matter of intention. 

The speaking, he has realized, is comparatively minor. Most of the steps are invisible ones, existing only within the caster, behaving like the parts of a key that move the pins in a lock. First, the intent to do dark magic, that is one pin. Then, the choice to sacrifice the components. Most importantly, the direction of the magic, the target, the action. 

Callum suppresses a wince when he crushes the worm against his palm, fluids squishing between his fingers.

When he speaks the incantation aloud, it is like turning the key: if all the parts align, the key will turn and the lock will open. By the time he opens his mouth, most of the spell has already been done. 

Inside him, it feels like it comes out as normal words: _Open the golden doors, return the caged to this world._

He’s seen enough dark magic to know that it doesn’t sound normal on the outside. There’s no time to wonder what it must look like to Ethari. Light floods his vision. He feels at once too big for his body, trapped against the wall of his own flesh, and too small, lost in the cavernous emptiness of himself. 

Far away, there are noises, and a light: pinkish, flickering, that reminds Callum of the sun on closed eyelids. Greenish, too, that reminds of nothing at all, because he does not think he has ever seen that kind of glow before. 

There is a cold ball in his chest which expands until his fingers and toes and scalp are all ice. He no longer belongs to himself, slipping down through his shoes, dangling on the edge of a precipice. 

_No, don’t--_

He clings to his own bones. 

Later, he will think about how completely different this is than before. For now, it is hard to think at all. 

A voice calls to him. It makes a sound like a struck match, and then a sound like swallowed surprise, and then a sound like a hesitation. 

Kh-ahl-um.

What does it mean? 

He turns his face to the dim light of something far away, a sun, but not a sun -- not yellow, like a sun, but an incomplete black, tinged with purple, like a perfectly spherical ripe eggplant. In all other ways it seems to be a sun, and it warms him, melting the ice inside. 

_Callum --_ this is his name, he remembers. The hum is pouring over him and around him, holding him like an enormous hand. 

_“--llum!”_

It does not speak in words, but there is a sense: of apology, and of love, and of sorrow, like a mother who has accidentally harmed her child. 

“Callum!” 

This voice is sharper, cold and urgent. _Rayla?_

He shudders, and all at once is he back inside his body, adjusting to the fit. Bit by bit, he crawls back up his skeleton, wriggling and clutching like the worm in his palm. At last, his real eyes overlap the eyes of his body again. 

When he opens his eyes, the ones staring back at him from inches away are not Rayla’s. No, these are sharp, green, and underlined by a pair of blue marks across the snarling face they’re attached to. 

Ethari shouts, “Runaan, no!”

At once, Callum realizes what’s happening -- a knife pointed at his belly -- and then he gets the wind knocked out of him. A kick to the ribs. Runaan rolls off him, shoved away in a struggling tangle of limbs. Callum coughs, wheezes, struggles for breath. 

“What are you doing?” Runaan growls. “He’s a human! He is our enemy!”

“I know, I know,” Ethari hurries, somewhere. He murmurs something after that that Callum can’t catch or focus on because he’s too busy trying to get air into his lungs. 

He looks over and Runaan’s hawk eyes are fixed on him. 

Runaan wiggles out of Ethari’s grasp. He tries to pounce, but he’s still disoriented and his arm is in bad shape. He’s just off-balance enough that Callum can roll out of the way. Rayla seems to fall out of thin air between them, likely having leapt from a tree. Did she follow them? She probably could have, when he thinks about it. They’d never have heard her. 

She’d have seen everything.

“Are you okay!?” Rayla only glances back for a second. Her eyes are fixed on Runaan.

“I think so? But--”

“Run!” Rayla says. 

“What?!” Runaan’s lips draw back away from his teeth in a growl at Rayla.

“D’you trust me!?” Shouts Rayla. Callum realizes too late that it isn’t at him -- it’s at her _parents,_ shivering and confused off to one side, but murmuring their assent. Rayla directs, “don’t let Runaan hurt him, I’ll explain later.”

There is a wall of arguing, confused moonshadow elf between Callum and Runaan.

“Go!” Rayla insists.

“But--”

Rayla whirls around long enough to snarl, “Callum, you _made_ this problem, so I’ll mop it up, as usual, Just _go!”_

“What are you _doing?”_ Runaan shouts over the ruckus. “Traitorous--”

Rayla and Ethari both start talking over each other. Callum finally takes Rayla’s advice and flees the clearing the same way he came in, without looking back. There’s basically no hope of finding his way through the woods like this, he’s as likely as not to get hopelessly lost. He tries not to imagine what would happen if Runaan found him out here -- he’d be like the fox in a royal hunt. 

The only way out is up.

Callum is far from the best tree-climber, but there’s so many trees around, at least a few have low enough branches for him to pull himself up. Like the clumsiest, most lumbering squirrel of all time, he hauls himself from one branch to another, until he’s at the topmost bit of the canopy that will hold him, above the leaves to the waist.

Now’s the time. 

Each day, he’s been checking up on the runes he’s painted on his arms, just in case -- hopefully they don’t fail him now. He opens the sleeves on his new jacket, silently thanking the royal tailor.

He closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. When he lets it out, it is like reaching a hand out to grasp an invisible thread, and when he breathes in again, he swallows that same thread that connects him to the sky. 

_“Manus, Pluma, Volantis--”_

It isn’t exactly the smoothest takeoff in the history of flight, but it gets him in the air. 

* * *

Outside the hearings, Opeli asks plenty of Soren and Corvus. During the ceremonies themselves, however, their role seems to boil down largely to appearances, in the form of stoically standing to either side of her, presenting a united front and dissauding trouble.

As a result, the time drags a little, and when it’s not boring, it’s stressful: there’s no shortage of those who cry, who shout, who flail. A few try to lash out, but don’t get very far. 

The stress in these moments doesn’t come from the danger. There isn’t any. It comes from that awkward, guilty sympathy, a sensation like a thumb being pressed right into the hollow at the base of Soren’s neck, making it hard to swallow. 

Raum is the last to be brought before Opeli tonight, just as he was the last in the line earlier. He carries himself the way he speaks: with a strange grace that makes him look nobler than would fit a farmer’s son.

“You accuse this man of activities that subvert peace with Xadia. Please explain,” Opeli says to the agent, as always.

The agent who discovered him explains that his human disguise at the time was that of a dark mage seeking components, and Raum was well supplied and willing to sell. The agent made a comment on the new way of things, a check of Raum’s awareness and understanding of what he was doing. _Did you hear this is illegal now? The dragons have outlawed everything about dark magic. It’s too bad._

At this time, the agent claims that Raum spat on the ground, and said, _that is what I think of the dragons. What right do they have?_

As always, Opeli asks for his side of the story. “You may speak now, if you wish to provide additional or differing information. If you were compelled, you are welcome to tell us who compelled you, and if you provide information about others who pose a risk to peace, it will be taken as a sign of good faith.”

People get set free this way, and Soren is buoyed on a wave of hope. 

Raum holds his head high and doesn’t bother to regard Opeli, but rather stares unblinking at Soren, when he says, “I have acted in secret, assisted by none. I have no information to provide.”

It’s too much.

“What are you _doing!?”_ Soren blurts out. 

Raum only looks at him, a question on his face. 

Rather than shut up and keep still, Soren digs himself deeper: “If you were selling components, why don’t you just… tell us who you sold to, and agree to stop? You don’t have to--I--This could end, right here!”

“Soren--” Opeli tries to soothe him, as professionally as she can. 

“I have no customers,” Raum says, unblinking, deadpan. “Perhaps I wasn’t cut out for sales.”

Like the rest, Opeli orders that he will be sent to the border. 

“And go talk to his family,” she tells the agents, once he’s far enough away not to hear her. “Even if he _was_ being truthful, perhaps his family can shed light on who he associates with.”

“I’ll do it,” Soren says. 

The agent from earlier sneers. “Why, so you can protect your little friend’s friends?”

“Soren?” Opeli looks to the agent, and then back to him, with sudden concern. “That outburst _was,_ well...”

“It’s true, we were… friends, once, kind of,” he says. It is a critical moment. He can feel the pressure on his next words, as though they’re being judged before he can even begin to say them out loud. “Imagine if he was lying, and his family actually knows, or is involved. They’d be suspicious of these guys, even if they did look human. They sort of know _me,_ though. They might tell _me_ the truth.”

It isn’t that he has truly lied. All of those words are true, even if the implication of them, and the reason he said them, is not what it seems to be. 

“ _If_ that’s the case, they might be dangerous,” Opeli says, and Soren gets the distinct sense she’s doing the same thing he is. “I won’t have you go alone, but yes, I believe your presence would be of help. Thank you for volunteering.”

After the plans are made to ride out with a few Sunfire elves the following day, Soren douses the torches and says his goodnights before wandering the castle grounds like a restless sailor on the deck of a ship until he’s tired enough to sleep. 

He used to have a late patrol duty, sometimes, when he was in training, and he knows the rhythms of the castle in the dark. Perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised to pass Narampu, then, but he does jump a little when he comes around a quiet corner and she’s on the other side.

There’s a halfhearted wave, but neither of them stop to talk. 

With every step, he plans -- he imagines conversations he might have with Raum’s family. Sure, he has to believe that they don’t have anything to truly fear, because they’re good people who want peace, and that the people who _do_ have something to fear surely deserve it, he _has_ to believe that. For some reason, though, he keeps turning words and phrases over in his head like river rocks, looking for the perfect shiny one that would protect them. 

They don’t _need_ protecting, he reminds himself, but he does not stop. 

The following day, he will spot several pieces of evidence that Raum was clearly _not_ working alone. The Sunfire elves, unfamiliar with humans and dark magic, will miss these _completely --_ they’ll hardly even notice how nervous everyone is when they descend on the farmhouse _._ Upon returning to the castle, Opeli will ask the little squad what they found, and the Sunfire elves will shrug and say there was nothing of interest, no reason to think the family had anything to do with any of it.

When she turns to Soren, he will decide all of the sudden that one of these choices is reversible -- that he could “suddenly remember” evidence later, if he wants to, but that if he says something now, there is no _un_ -saying it. This is how he will justify what he does next.

He will make the choice he imagines someone else making for him. 

He will lie. 

* * *

“I guess you see why I used to come here,” Rayla says. Callum hadn’t even heard her footsteps.“You must be getting hungry. I brought you some moonberries.”

He _is_ getting hungry. He’s been out here, sitting amongst the roots of a large tree at the edge of the grass, growing increasingly covered in curious adoraburrs, for probably about half a day. He saw the sun come up, dozed for a while using his mage-wings as a blanket, and then just… stayed, unsure of what to do next, enjoying the liminal space. 

For all that he tried and failed to meditate on Phoe-Phoe’s back, he spent some time trying that again. He thinks he’s getting better at it.

Rayla comes around and sits next to him -- not too close, not as close as she might have done a couple days ago, but close enough that it’s clearly something of an olive branch.

“How’d you find me?” He asks. 

“Call it a good guess. Oh, and I met a crow -- a second one -- with one o’ those little red bands on it. It was probably looking for us, but couldn’t find the Silvergrove. I followed it, and right over there--” she points to a spot just inside the woods, at the edge of Rayla’s home, “it gave me this.”

She brandishes a rolled parchment with Ezran’s personal seal.

“You were right.” Callum doesn’t meet her eyes. “This is a really nice place.”

“I know you just did what you thought was right,” Rayla says, gaze fixed across the blades of grass. She takes a deep breath. “Callum, I think I need… ugh--”

“What?”

She says it through her teeth, wincing all the while: “Big... feelings time.”

“Aha!--”

_“Don’t.”_

“Okay, so…,” Callum encourages, as calmly as he can.

“I don’t know where to start. Runaan hates me, I think.”

“Oh.”

“I knew he’d be that way, but it was _so_ much worse than I imagined. And my parents are… Well, they’ll be okay I think, but they’re pretty out of it.”

“And the big feelings?”

“Like I got two parents back, but only kind-of, and lost the other. Guilty, ‘cause I don’t completely hate it. Furious with Runaan, and guilty for being furious. Scared, because my parents and I are like strangers, we tiptoe round each other, barely talkin’. Plus, I’m so, _so_ angry at you, but I think that might _also_ be a kind of _scared,_ just… painted over with _angry,_ ‘cause angry’s easier.”

What does he say to that? He can’t say he’s sorry, because he’s not, he’d do it again. If he had to relive the same day over and over he’d do it a thousand times. As far as he’s concerned, it’s still the right thing to do. He’d defend it, even to Luna Tenebris herself, if she were here.

Fortunately, Rayla goes on instead: “Remember how I never killed anyone?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I _have_ killed someone now.” She looks down at her own hands, as if she might find blood there. 

Callum isn’t sure what to say to that either, so he moves his hand, rests it palm-up next to her: a low-pressure invitation. She glances at it, but doesn’t touch him.

She says, “I looked at the marks of death on his face and it was easy, he was a _monster._ _Now_ I find myself thinking… I bet he had a good reason to do dark magic too, at the beginning. Maybe there was someone he cared for, who he wanted to help -- same as you.”

“So you’re scared that I’m going to become like him.” It’s hard to even process, it’s such an alien thought. 

Rayla holds her hands like a weighing scale. “All I can think about is… Either _you’re_ destined to become a monster, _or,_ I didn’t kill a monster at all. I killed a _person,_ not so different from the one I let go in the woods.”

Her hands become fists and land in her lap.

“That doesn’t mean you did the wrong thing,” Callum says, softly. 

“I know, but--” Her nails press into her palms. “It was _simple._ Now, because of you, and this… it’s not. Or I guess, it never was, and you forced me to see it when I didn’t want to. It feels _bad,_ and if I can’t feel good about something so clear as this, I truly am hopeless as an assassin, as bad as Runaan said and worse.”

“Maybe that’ll just make you a better... something else.”

“I can only hope so.”

They sit at the edge of the meadow for awhile, saying nothing. 

“What’s next?” Callum asks, wincing at his own lack of grace. He tries to make up for it by swallowing his upset and saying, “If you can’t stay with me, I understand.”

“I don’t know.” And then, after a long held breath, she says, “I haven’t changed how I feel, alright? We saved Zym and won a battle and somehow _this,_ getting my parents back, is a bigger, scarier change. I just need some time to… figure out how things are going to be now.”

_Without having to look after you while I do it,_ Callum imagines is the unsaid portion. Something in his chest twists, but he says, “It sounds like I should... go? I mean, give you some space, let you catch up with your family, let everyone be happy about having their friends back, without having to stare _me_ in the face and think about how it happened. Not like a forever thing,” he hurries to add, “just like you said. A little time.”

“Gonna have to anyway,” Rayla mutters. 

“What?”

“Well…” She passes the parchment over to him. “Branchfolk didn’t invite _me,_ did they? Only _you._ ”

He unrolls the parchment, the seal already peeled away from one side from where Rayla must have read it. Callum’s not sure how he feels about that, but figures it’s probably not the time to address it. 

The handwriting isn’t Ezran’s but the words obviously are, at least, most of them. There are a few places where it breaks into strangely formal language. The gist of it is just that Ylai’s family wants to invite Callum to the shifting village, to try to learn Earth magic. 

“I think they’re jealous,” Rayla explains. 

Callum frowns. “Jealous?”

“Skywing and Earthblood mages have a bit of a… friendly rivalry, you might say. Nothin’ serious. You’re the first human Primal mage _I’ve_ ever heard of, they probably want to see if you can learn to do their kind of magic too.”

As out of the blue and bizarre as it is, Callum’s not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. A chance to learn Earth magic makes something under his skin buzz with excitement. Imagine if he connected to _two_ arcana? 

He could be something really special, then. 

Rayla outfits him with some food that travels well, and a moon opal (she points out that he can do some moon magic with it in a pinch, but better yet, it’ll identify him as a friend) and gives him directions, a safe path to the other side of the forest, where he can meet Ylai’s uncle at the crossroads there.

“Go and be a good ambassador,” she jokes, though he can see anxiety at the corners of her eyes. “Then come back and show me your new tricks.”

“I will. I’m gonna be back whether you want me to or not,” Callum teases. “You’ll have to kick me out all over again.”

“I’m not--”

“I know.”

There’s no kiss goodbye, but she does let him pick up her hands in his for a moment before he turns to leave. 

She’s right, in the end -- the path is safe, quiet and dark beneath the trees, and bordered the whole way with plants bearing berries and nuts. He must walk longer than he did with Ethari, but it _feels_ shorter, by dint of being easier. 

At the treeline is the crossroads, and his escort: A tall, thin elf with long dark hair and a serious face, wearing flowing cream-colored clothes and sitting astride the back of a giant deer with leaves growing out of its antlers. A second deer, complete with leather saddle, waits for him. 

* * *

Runaan stops pacing back and forth in the small workshop space, but he still _feels_ like a caged animal. “I beg of you, please, tell me that it was dark magic that twisted you both.”

“It wasn’t,” Ethari says, softly as he can, but clearly getting frustrated. “It’s exactly as I explained.”

Runaan grimaces. “I knew that _Rayla_ was soft-hearted because of the way _you_ spoiled her with weakness, but I didn’t imagine you were both soft- _headed_ as well.”

“Shut up!” Rayla demands. “The dragon prince is alive and well, no thanks to _you_ refusing to help. You had a chance for _real_ justice, and you rejected it for more death! How is that _not taking life lightly?_ Ez almost--”

“Oh, she has a nickname for him now,” Runaan chides. “Our sworn mark is your pet, then?”

“Not my pet, my _friend.”_ Through her teeth, she teases, “And just _wait_ until you hear about--”

Ethari stops her, trying to shake his head minutely, but Runaan catches him. 

“What? Until I hear about what?” 

Chin jutted, defiant, Rayla says, “We’re _together.”_

Runaan whirls on Ethari. “You knew.”

With a sigh, Ethari says, “Of course I knew.”

“And you _allowed_ this?”

“Allowed?” Ethari coughs out a dry, sardonic laugh. “So she’s old enough to murder a child, but not old enough to choose her own boyfriend? And anyway, the boy’s a hero no matter how you slice it.”

“I’m _right here!_ ” Rayla interrupts, last vestiges of patience drained away. “Stop talking about me like I’m not! Callum did dark magic to save you. You’re pissed. Trust me, I get it, so am I, but I’m going to need you to take a minute and then get the _hell_ over it.”

“How _dare--”_

“What I was _saying_ was, Ezran almost _died_ to keep Zym safe, and Callum almost died to save me. They had to fight _other humans_ . They were willing to give up everythin’ to get Zym home, even after his father killed their mother. And now, Callum risked his _life_ to save _you._ So just… _shut up!_ You don’t have to like me, or them, but you also don’t have to treat the people who only want to help you and do the right thing like dirt under your heels just because you’re scared and angry and confused.”

Ethari’s lips are pursed tight, but there's a little smile in them, too. 

“And yet, he has already betrayed you,” Runaan points out. 

“What d’ye mean?”

“By your own words, you say that you are upset with him using dark magic. He must have known your feelings on the matter.”

“Yes, but--”

“What has it been, a month? Two? That is how quickly humans will turn on you, no matter how gentle they make themselves seem. They are snakes, nothing more, and faith in them will bring ruin, just as you brought--wait.”

“What?” Rayla demands. 

Runaan looks her over once more. “Your binding--”

“Oh, you finally noticed? Aye, gone, courtesy of Prince Azymondias. Guess dragon fangs are the one thing that cut them. _Now_ do you believe me?” 

She storms off before he has the chance to say anything more, door slammed behind her, her feet deliberately heavy on the steps. The truth is that he _does_ believe the facts of her story, particularly given that bit of compelling evidence, but it still doesn’t add up.

“How could you do it?” Runaan asks of Ethari, who is sinking into a chair in the corner. “You let a human talk you into participating in dark magic. You must have known I would not want this.”

Ethari’s face darkens as he rests his elbows on his knees. “You’re not the only one who wants things, Runaan. You’re not the only one whose feelings matter. I love you, truly, but you’re behavin’ like a right arsehole.”

“The man I fell in love with would never have taken a human to a silverpool and _defiled_ it with dark magic.”

“Maybe the man you fell in love with died the day your flower sunk into that water. Maybe the man who’s left over isn’t sure that things are so black and white anymore.”

“And how can I forgive you when you have no remorse?” Runaan says, faintly nauseated. 

“Runaan, I don’t think you understand. I did the right thing. I _want_ your understanding, but I did nothin’ that needs forgiven.”

Runaan hardens his heart as best as he can. “Care for them, please.” And then, at the question on Ethari’s face, he explains, “Tiadrin, and Lain, and Rayla. Take care of them, do not allow Rayla to fall any further into darkness.”

“Why? Where are _you_ goin’?”

“If your stories are true, the nearest dragon is the one in residence in the human kingdom across the border. I will present my case and learn whether she sees fit to remove my binding.”

“Good luck,” Ethari says. “Be safe.”

Outside, Runaan whistles for his mount, but only Ethari’s arrives, and slowly. Her head is hung low, her tail dragging on the ground. She looks behind her, to where her moonstrider friend isn’t, and then back up at Runaan. 

He crouches on the ground and presents his forehead -- she bumps it with her own, rubbing her soft cheek along his, but it is a weak greeting. 

“Our friend has been lost, I take it,” Runaan murmurs to her. He drops into a cross legged sit. 

Somehow, of all of it, this is the worst omen of all, to know that his moonstrider must have died, never knowing where Runaan was or if they would meet again. He could have been alone, afraid, ill -- Runaan has no idea the conditions, but the fellow was in perfect health before, so it must have been frightening, whatever happened. 

Nothing makes sense, anymore, and for the first time in many years, he buries his face in the shadowpaw’s mane and lets a few tears fall -- for the world that he left behind, and the one he’s woken up in, and for the friend he’d raised from a pup. 

Ethari’s shadowpaw is, as always, like Ethari himself, patient.

Runaan gathers himself, and so does the mount, and together they set out for the ride to Katolis. She is solid, and her footsteps are as sure and smooth as ever through the forest, despite the grim determination they are both wrapped up in, and despite Runaan only directing her with one hand. 

It gives him time to think.

Perhaps the princeling found himself compelled to allow the dragon prince to be saved, but that does not excuse him, nor does Rayla’s foolish, adolescent affection for him. Runaan was a teenager once himself, and he remembers how easily they grow interested, no matter how ill-suited the match. 

It is among the boy’s crimes that he has taken advantage of her good heart to turn her against her own family. This is the nature of humans, to take, and to twist, to selfishly change things to suit them without concern for anyone else. And now this boy has laid his corrupt touch upon Runaan’s husband and foster daughter alike.

Runaan went into battle against his people, accomplished one goal, but was captured and brought low. He _lost_ that part of the fight, and he accepted his fate accordingly, as befits a warrior. All the child had to do was _leave_ him there in the coin, worse off even than if he were dead. It was his right to see Runaan suffer and die, as the victor. 

And yet, instead, in the true human fashion of being a _sore winner,_ he flaunted his dominion by removing Runaan from the coin, as if to make him indebted. The possibility cannot be eliminated that he did not realize the depth of this cruelty, that he was more foolish than devious, but still. 

If the young human believes that this is the end of what stands between them, he could not be more wrong. 

He arrives across the river from Katolis Castle just as the sun rises. In keeping with his feeling that the world he has returned to is not the one that he left, there is an entire new edifice at the other side of a bridge that did not exist before. It is of no construction type he has ever seen, but surely only elves and dragons could have created it so quickly. 

One of the Moonshadow guards is known to him, and vouches for him with the others. The Queen Regent (so it _is_ true) is not occupied, and so, flanked by two Moonshadow and two Sunfire elf guards, he is brought before her. 

He kneels.

“Who is this?” Her voice vibrates the polished obsidian. “Identify yourself.”

“I am Runaan, of the Silvergrove, assassin to Queen Zubeia.”

“Hmm. And why are you before me?” Her enormous head snakes forward, nearer to him, sniffing. 

“I was captured after the successful elimination of King Harrow of Katolis.” He keeps his eyes on his reflection in the floor. “I was imprisoned by dark magic, courtesy of an evil mage, and Prince Callum of Katolis used dark magic to release me.”

“Prince Callum?”

“Indeed.”

“I appreciate your candor. Please go on.”

“Had I the option, I would have remained imprisoned rather than permitted such a thing, but no choice was given to me. As Prince Ezran seems no longer a target, I come before you with regard to my binding.”

“To request that I remove it?”

“Respectfully, no. I wish only to have it removed if you believe it to be right, as the new ruler of this realm and representative of Queen Zubeia within it. If it is not your wish that it be removed, I shall bear the consequence without complaint.”

“Stand, assassin,” says the dragon, “and look at me.”

Runaan obeys. 

She asks: “Would you be of service to me?”

“Of course.”

“Even if I did not remove your binding?”

“Of course.”

He wills himself still as her fire-scaled lips draw away from her teeth. With seemingly impossible precision, she hooks one canine the size of a sword into the binding, and it snaps instantly. 

She draws back and says, “You abhor dark magic, it seems.”

“As do all good folk,” Runaan replies. 

“I would like to offer you a new profession, slightly different than your former one, but not too far removed, such that you might help me to stamp out dark magic and traitorous sentiment wherever it takes root.”

_Yes._ Yes, perhaps some good _has_ truly come of all this. “I am at your service.”

“There is a sunfire healer in the castle. Once she has restored your arm, please report to the Ministry of Justice. Its leader is a woman named Opeli. Tell her that I have sent you personally. If she has any questions, she is welcome to ask them directly to me.”

“A... human woman?” Runaan flinches as he realizes that he’s questioning her. 

Fortunately, the regent only laughs, a rumble that feels like a storm. “You need only tell your story, and I believe you will have a friend you did not expect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all ready for a season finale?


	9. Book Four: Earth | Chapter Nine: Ore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“My turn shall also come:_  
>  I sense the spreading of a wing.”  
>  **― Osip Mandelstam, The Selected Poems**

**Book Four: Earth**

**Chapter 9: Ore**

Ever since his near-miss with a frozen grave, cold water has made a fairly frequent appearance in Ezran’s nightmares, but tonight at least  _ starts _ better: beneath ice again, but he’s not cold, and he can breathe. 

It’s not a lake this time, but a grand sea. Over his head are endless sheets of ice, in some places thinner than a hair, in others thicker than castle walls. Light from above comes blue and green through the frozen ceiling, its mottled underside an echo of a cloudy day on land. The water itself is as clear as air. Fluffy jellyfish part for him like an adoring crowd as he swims above a rocky seafloor covered in moss and urchins.

A pale blue seal dappled with white slips by like an arrow, and the loops back again to do laps around him and say hello. 

The weather above turns all at once, the way it can only do in a dream. The ice sheet goes dark and gray, and a bolt of lightning cracks it, shatters it like a dropped mirror. A moment later, the sound of thunder follows, so loud it seems to be  _ inside  _ Ezran’s head, which he supposes it technically is.

He’s learning how to deal with nightmares, though, and he’s getting better at seeing them for what they are and tearing his way free. 

Ezran forces himself awake before things can get any worse, blinking in the darkness.

For a moment, he thinks the dream has followed him into reality, but the beating, clattering sound isn’t quite storm-like, despite coming from the window. 

Something is buffeting the glass. 

Still groggy, it finally occurs to him to wonder where Ylai and Narampu are. He peers around the dark room, but for once, he is  _ actually, properly  _ alone. They tail him everywhere, and then when something actually happens…

Oh. 

What if something’s happened  _ to them? _

Ezran slides out of a bed that still doesn’t feel like his own and approaches the window. He places his hand on the glass, and the thing comes back, smacking softly against it, pushing away, and then smacking against it again: a bird, trying to get his attention. 

He has to focus, with the glass in the way, but--

Dee?

To reach the lock, he has to stand on a chair. He throws the window wide, and sure enough, Dee comes tumbling through the opening and into the room, grumbling half-caws as she rights herself on top of the comforter. She is carrying a letter, insisting that he take it from her. When Ezran sits on the edge of the bed and touches her shoulder, he gets an image, a sense: Callum, surrounded by a smell like a carpenter’s workshop, fingers stained gray-black. Charcoal? Ink?

The paper is slightly damp as Ezran unrolls it, and he realizes that there are actually several sheets, not only of writing, but of drawings as well.

The first one is a drawing of Dee with a peanut in her beak, which Ezran holds up to show her. She looks at it and preens herself, using her beak to smooth out feathers that are slightly ruffled in the sketch, as though the drawing is a mirror. Adjustments made, she hops closer to the paper and touches the tip of her beak lightly to where the peanut is. 

“Right, right,” Ezran says, laughing and finding the trousers he’d worn the day before in a pile by the dresser so that he can retrieve a peanut from the pocket and hand them over. 

The second page is a much grander drawing. It seems to be from the perspective of something very small, which means that if Callum drew it, the trees in Ylai’s home must be absolutely  _ huge.  _ A tight grouping of them supports a unified-but-tiered pagoda structure, a castle-sized home with many stories, but no outer walls. 

Each floor is different from the ones above and below. Some are tightly packed with little sketched-out elves, some are sparse or only have little hazy figures of animals. The bottom tiers near the ground are tighter packed, but above the twelfth or so, they begin to stretch out, with tall spiral staircases connecting them. The screened-off areas must be private rooms.

An arrow is drawn to one such spot a few floors from the top, and Callum has written,  _ This is where I’m sleeping! They say it’s a place of honor, because I’m like a diplomat. It took a couple nights to get used to it being so open, but Dee loves it… _ _  
_ _  
_ On the third page is a loose sketch of a lean, elderly-looking woman with wavy silver hair and curving, branching horns covered in blooms. Her gown is tiered and fluttery, like the petals of an upside-down flower. In the drawing, she has her eyes closed, and her hands pressed together. 

On the fourth page is the letter. 

> _ Hey Ezran! _
> 
> _ I hope everything is okay at home. _
> 
> _ I can’t talk to Dee like you can, but I used some pictures to try and show her how I wanted her to bring this straight to you. She’s really smart, so I hope it worked. It’s nice of Ylai to help out with writing letters and stuff, but I’d really rather if only you read this.  _ _  
>  _ _  
>  _ _ To anyone who is not Ezran: Please stop reading here. I can’t make you, but I would really appreciate it.  _ _  
>  _ _  
>  _ _ Thank Ylai for getting me invited to Eranenwood though. I don’t think I’d ever have found this place by myself. Did you know the forest actually shifts around it? Or... it shifts in the forest… I’m not really sure how it works, exactly, just that moves around a lot, so it’s never in the same place twice.  _ _  
>  _ _  
>  _ _ I’m pretty proud of that drawing of the place, but there’s one thing I couldn’t draw small enough to show: there are dragons carved everywhere! On the chair arms, table legs, floors, ceilings, screens, stairways… even on the bowls and cups. You can’t look at anything without seeing dragons. I can’t imagine how long it must have taken to make this place. _ _  
>  _ _  
>  _ _ Everyone’s pretty nice to me, at least as far as I can tell. It’s kind of hard to know how folks are feeling, though. I know Rayla said her people don’t like showing a lot of emotion, but wow, Branchfolk really take that whole idea to the next level. They’re so dignified. I want to be able to act like that, but it’s hard! I kind of wish you were here with me so I could smile and laugh and not feel like everyone’s looking at me funny. _ _  
>  _ _  
>  _ _ Anyway, they’re doing their best to take care of me. There was some confusion at first, because they didn’t know how much I needed to eat -- it turns out they get most of what they need from sunlight, like plants do. That’s why they’re kind of green-ish! They do eat and drink, but more for fun, or for social reasons, so it’s not like a three-meals-a-day situation. But don’t worry! Everything’s sorted out now, I’m not going hungry. _ _  
>  _ _  
>  _ _ Of course, I’m here to learn Earth magic more than anything else, right? So I have a teacher, a mage named Myvia. She’s the lady I drew. Myvia tells me that the forest used to be a lot bigger, and there were humans in it once, but that was thousands of years ago. I can’t tell if she means she was there, or if someone told her, haha.  _
> 
> _ Really though, she’s the only one here who even looks a day over 40, and I know some of them are a lot older than that, so I’m kind of afraid to ask how old she is, especially because she’s so serious and strict. Between studying and meditating, I hardly have time to do anything else.  _
> 
> _ That’s okay though, because it doesn’t really seem like she wants me to wander around on my own. _
> 
> _ That’s not to say I’m complaining. I’m grateful that I have a chance to try and learn from her. I just hope I’m a good enough student. So far, I haven’t been able to do  _ **_anything_ ** _. I really want to connect to the Earth primal, but it doesn’t feel like I’m making any progress, and I wonder if it’s even possible. It has to be, right? Every day is basically the same: Myvia tells me that I have to understand the web of life, and how everything is connected. The way I’ll know I get it is if I can make a seed grow.  _ _  
>  _ _  
>  _ _ As of today, I haven’t managed so much as a sprout, but I’m going to keep trying.  _
> 
> _ Anyway, I guess I’ve been writing all this to put off what I really have to say that I don’t want to.  _
> 
> _ I want you to find out from me, not from anybody else, and that’s the most important thing. You’re my brother, and I love you, and I don’t want to keep anything secret from you anymore.  _
> 
> _ Remember how me and Rayla were going to put her family to rest, because they were trapped in the coins, and the only way to free them would be dark magic? _
> 
> _ Well... I freed them.  _
> 
> _ I think I’m okay, I mean, it felt weird, but not as bad as last time. And it was just one bug, which like, I know, still not good, but with three lives at stake, me and Ethari -- that’s one of Rayla’s foster dads -- decided to go for it. _
> 
> _ Rayla’s not so happy with me, but I think we’re gonna be okay after a while. I’m just giving her some space right now. I wish I could write to her too, but I don’t want to put any pressure on her. I am making drawings for her, though, to show her later on.  _
> 
> _ Please write me back, if you can, even if you just write “Callum I don’t hate you” and nothing else? _
> 
> _ Love,  _
> 
> _ Your bro _

What Ezran does next doesn’t really feel like a decision that he makes, it’s just something his muscles do, while he’s along for the ride. Letter in hand, he scrambles across the bed, down the steps of the platform it rests on, and to the other side of the room, where the fire burns low, almost embers.

He balls up the paper, all except the picture of Dee, and tosses it into the little flame, watching, transfixed, making absolutely sure it is completely consumed.

On the opposite side of the crow drawing, he hurriedly writes,  _ love you no matter what.  _ He doesn’t address it, he doesn’t sign it, he doesn’t stamp it, he just rolls it back up and gives it to Dee, along with whispered instructions:

“If anyone tries to take this from you except Callum, rip it up.”

For this additional service, Dee demands more peanuts, which Ezran dutifully provides before he sends her on her way. 

In the silence that falls after Dee is gone, Ezran hears a rustling outside the door: footsteps, and voices. One of them is difficult to make out, the other one is definitely Narampu. Back from wherever the two of them went? Just in case, Ezran hurries into bed and splays out to pretend like he’s been asleep this whole time. 

If he concentrates, he can hear some of what they’re saying out there. 

“--think we should.” That’s Narampu.

There’s a  _ shh-- _ Ylai hushing her. “Why? The plan of what to do is not decided. We should wait for Scyntyllah. She will say him.”

Narampu answers, “Don’t you think it would be better if it came from us?”

Ylai whispers something Ezran can’t make out, something about a  _ calm and safe place. _

“I know, I know.” Narampu is a lot louder. “Trust is important too, though. He’s probably extra sensitive to being left in the dark after what happened with his dad.”

“If he has anger, we say him that we have no choice. We should following orders,” Ylai hisses. 

“Fine, have it your way!” Narampu almost  _ shouts  _ this time, which is weird, because she didn’t sound angry before, so it comes out of nowhere. If Ezran didn’t know any better, he would say she wasn’t trying to be quiet at all. 

“Sshh!” Ylai shushes again. “I will take the hallway. You guard inside. Switch at dawn. If he did not wake, we never left.”

This is the moment. Should he pretend he was asleep the whole time, or stay awake and talk to her? If he fakes sleep, everything goes on just as before, which might be for the best to keep the peace. But if he doesn’t, what will she say about her absence? 

_ That’s  _ what he wants to know, and that’s why he sits up as she pushes open the door. 

She jumps slightly, just in the shoulders, when she comes in and sees him awake. She gives a little halfhearted wave before closing the door behind her. 

Only a few steps into the room does she glance back at the door behind her, and then (far quieter than anything she said outside) whisper, “Sorry, did you have a nightmare?”

Ezran shakes his head. 

Narampu glances behind her again, points at the foot of the bed and then tilts her head -- a question. When Ezran nods, she clambers up into a cross-legged sit in the corner, slouching against the bedpost. 

“Ezran,” she whispers, so quiet now that he almost has to scoot forward to hear her. “Can I tell you something if you promise not to tell anyone I told you?”

* * *

Soren wakes up on his own, on the heels of the best night of sleep he’s had in weeks. It’s spontaneous and leisurely, unforced by things like noise or temperature or bladder. The air has a distinct new dawn smell that he registers before he even opens his eyes properly. When he does, he gets confirmation: the sun’s just barely up, the sky still mild and cool. He can feel autumn in the distance, not quite arrived yet but not so far away anymore.

As long as he’s awake, he might as well get some exercise, go for a jog, enjoy the fresh air -- all those years of complaining about being forced out of bed at this hour for training, and suddenly here he is, on his own, the hollering commander’s voice at his back having somehow become his own.

He lets his feet decide the way and soon he’s climbing stair after stair, until he’s gone in so many circles he’s almost dizzy. At last he reaches the highest walkway, right above the front gate. Inward, it looks onto the lower bailey, but Soren is more interested in the view  _ out:  _ over the bridge and the town, stirring in the early light. 

For a moment, he catches his breath, and admires the view. 

Just as he’s about to turn back, though, something in the distance on the road catches his eye, coming around a bend: flecks of movement, blobs of fluttering green and brown, splotches of white canvas. He hesitates, watching alongside the early-shift guards as the shapes go on and on and on, resolving (if he squints) into wagons, horses and people.

This is a caravan, too slow and chaotic to be military. He leans forward over the wall, as if the extra few inches will give him a better view of the  _ something _ that must still be miles away.

Out loud, mainly to himself, he mutters a soft  _ “What the--”  _

The nearest guard, standing like a statue between two merlons, answers the question, despite it not being for her: “Those will be the refugees, I expect, sir.”

“Refugees?” Soren repeats dumbly. 

“From Del Bar. You… didn’t hear?”

Soren doesn’t reply, except with a choked draw of breath that isn’t quite a gasp. He takes off running, flying through the tower door and back down the steps as though pursued by flame. Sure-footed and single-minded, he skips a stair, and then another, and then several, leaping to the landing below. 

It hurts his sides and back more than he expected, and he coughs, catching his breath. He considers himself recovered from the injuries he got from the queen regent’s sister, but that doesn’t mean his body doesn’t remind him of them at the most inconvenient moments.

His eyes have to adjust to the light as he bursts through the lower door and into the morning sun of the lower bailey. He makes a bee-line for the gates and the bridge beyond, but for--

“Soren!” 

That’s Opeli’s voice behind him. Why is she about this early? And why here? She sounds cheerful enough. As much as he’d like to keep running, what choice has he got? Soren stumbles to a stop and turns around, suddenly conscious that while he’s at least a step better-dressed than in pajamas, he’s very much not properly in uniform, either, and his hair is probably still wild.

“Good morning--” It takes him a moment to register who the elf next to Opeli is. Specifically, the time is spent on his brain resolving  _ generic Moonshadow elf #35  _ into, as he regrettably splutters aloud, “ _ That guy! _ What’s he doing here!?”

Opeli takes it in stride and laughs like a silver bell, while  _ that guy’s  _ posture shifts from 100% steel-spine to 110%. She introduces, “I’m glad we ran into you, I was giving him a tour. This is Runaan. Runaan, Soren, Soren, Runaan.”

“We’ve met,” Soren says, a little more venom in his voice than he should probably be allowing.

“I... know,” admits Opeli, “But it was under less than ideal circumstances, so I was hoping--”

“Less than--He--I--!” In Soren’s defense, it’s only the stick up  _ that guy’s _ ass that makes him any less visibly flustered. There’s no way he’s not screaming internally just as loud as Soren is right now, absolutely _ no way. _

“I know, I know,” Opeli concedes, mouth tight. “Less than ideal, but…”

Runaan extends a hand. “This is the correct greeting, yes? It seems we have little choice but to give one another a second chance, by order of Queen Regent Scyntyllah,” he says, and the face might have taken a moment to click, but the  _ voice  _ is unmistakable. “I believe we are both good soldiers, just as able to follow orders now as we were then. Don’t you agree?”

Soren’s teeth are clenched so hard it’s a wonder he doesn’t crack any of them. Deliberately, he takes in a deep breath of the morning air and lets it out. 

He forces his jaw relaxed before he shakes Runaan’s hand (very, very firmly) and says, “Uh. Sure.”

“And we have the same goal:” Runaan goes on. “To create a united world free of treason and treachery, and above all else, dark magic.” He is polite enough, but there’s something beneath his tone that could freeze lava.

“Right,” Soren says, starting to get that  _ separating-from-his-body  _ feeling again. All at once, Soren gets the deeply stupid urge to remind  _ that guy _ that if it weren’t for  _ dark magic, _ Soren would have separated his head from his body that night. Instead, he says, “Look, this is weird, but fine, he’s on the Moonshadow team, whatever--” 

He needs to get across the bridge and onto a horse to ride out to meet the refugees, he doesn’t have time for this. 

Opeli corrects, “Actually, he’s my new…” she searches for the word, glances at Runaan, and then chooses, “coadjutor.”

Soren’s never heard that word before in his life, but he doesn’t want to say so in front of  _ that guy _ , and he can guess from the way she’s saying it that it means he’s important.

“You and Corvus will be reporting to him as well,” Opeli says, and he can see her squashing her discomfort. “If you are unable to set aside your feelings, I will understand if you need to step down. The order comes from above my head, so there’s little else I can offer you. That’s why I’m hoping you two can get along. ”

“It’s…” The words he wants to use about this are not ones he should say to a superior. It makes sense, he supposes. This guy was picked by Scyntyllah, while Soren was picked for assistance by someone who was picked by Scyntyllah, making him a step further removed from where the power is. Still, it sucks in about a thousand different ways that he can’t explain without looking like a self-important asshole, so he refocuses, tries to get back on track. “Look, I’m kind of in a hurry--”

“Actually--”

“No,” Soren stops her. He makes a sort of apologetic noise in his throat and says, “I”m sorry but, no, really. No one told me that refugees from Del Bar were coming. Whatever we have to do, we can do it later. Please. My  _ mom  _ might be down there.”

“I was _ hoping  _ you might--”

_ “She’s all the family I have left.”  _

A few people have begun to do that  _ thing  _ that people do, when they see an interesting conversation they might like to gossip about later. A maid fills her water bucket a little more slowly, a stable boy pauses leading a foal through the gate, gardeners pay less attention to the shrubs they’re trimming. 

Opeli knows it, too. 

“Of course. I understand. Later, then,” she concedes. “Come see me as soon as you can.”

Soren salutes them both (well, he salutes Opeli, and hopes it goes for both because he’s not sure he can swallow saluting  _ that guy  _ quite yet) and takes off again. On the other side of the bridge, he diverts only to commandeer a horse belonging to a guard returning from patrol. It’s his right, technically, and at a quick glance, the thing doesn’t  _ look  _ like it’s had too hard of a shift. It’s quicker than a stable trip, anyway.

In the saddle, he tips forward and presses his body against the horse’s mane. “Promise I’ll have you back soon, okay? We’re not going too far.”

All the way through the city, he pictures it: he’ll spot her right away, of course, and she’ll spot him, relief will flood him and they’ll wrap each other in a tight hug. She’ll look the same as she did when he last saw her three years ago (well, maybe a little shorter by comparison) and they’ll walk back up the hill together. He’ll tell her everything, and she’ll know exactly what to say. 

After she says it, whatever it is, everything will start to make sense again. That’s always been the way of it. He’s not  _ glad  _ that her home is in enough trouble for all these people to flee, but maybe she’ll stay in Katolis now. He’ll make sure she has a comfortable place, and… well he doesn’t know what to do about the magic situation, but she’s so sensible, so grounded, surely she’ll see reason and adapt, right?

He’ll figure something out. She’s his  _ mother, _ for crying out loud, surely they wouldn’t…

Would they?

It is with this image in his head that he reaches the caravan just as it passes within the technical outer boundary of the largest city in Katolis, but before it’s actually reached the wall. He’s off the horse and handing the reins to the nearest guard, along with the distant instruction to see that it gets back to the stable. When he finds mom, he’ll walk back with her. 

His eyes are fixed on the crowd: it’s mostly women and children, the only adult men in the group elderly or infirm or both. Some of the tougher women (that is, _ most _ women from Del Bar in Soren’s experience) and older boys likely provided most of the strong backs needed to make it this far. 

The front of the group is on foot, a few oxen and mountain horses flanking them, and they pour around Soren as if he isn’t even there, save for a few glances. He scans the faces for anything familiar -- his mother, most obviously, but if he can catch some other recognized face, they might know where she is. He hasn't been to Del Bar in years, though. Would he recall anyone he met, if they were right in front of his face?

The passage of the crowd seems to go on forever. People riding mules precede some of the larger wagons and he has to step off to one side of the road to let them pass, peering into the darkness of the canvas covers, hoping to see or be seen. The longer he spends failing in his mission, the heavier the weight on his chest.

Soren sidles further down the road, and further, and further still, for what feels like ages until the crowd begins to thin out. Anxiety braids itself into a knot and fills his stomach, and a nervous sweat starts to bead at his temples -- if she isn’t here, does that indicate she’s safe at home, or does it mean she’s in danger now, or worse?

Desperate, he looks to the skies, hoping to catch sight of a pied raven -- Hue and Mue were alive and well as of at least several months ago, when they brought his birthday gift. If mom were to evacuate, surely  _ they _ wouldn’t be far behind.

After the last stragglers in the crowd disperse onward toward the town, Soren begins to walk further up the road, as though his mother will appear just over the edge of what he can see if he only continues far enough. 

Just as he begins to seriously calculate how quickly he could ride to Del Bar, someone  _ does  _ appear, probably a part of the caravan, but having evidently fallen  _ very _ far behind, so far that she seems like she’s traveling alone: an elderly woman covered in a brown woolen blanket. 

She is short, and bent, which makes her shorter still, though she gains a little height back from the mad gray wires of her hair that stand out in all directions. When she gets close, he can see that her eyes are half clouded over and covered by thick spectacles, and her face seems to be crafted from crepe paper. 

“Pardon me  _ kjaere _ ,” she says, and Soren recognizes the dialect of the high mountains. He’d never have heard it if not for visiting mom -- the only people who talk that way live in the remotest villages, and even  _ there _ it fell out of fashion well before he was born, making it forever sound like old-person-language. The elders up there sometimes speak it so thickly it’s hard to understand them. Luckily that’s not the case here.

“You seem like a nice young man.” The woman’s voice is as turned by age as the rest of her. “Would you help me?”

If his mother were to finally come by only to see him ignoring probably-someone’s-grandma to find her, she’d take off her shoe and smack him upside the head, so he bends his knees and says, “Yeah, okay, sure. Uh, welcome to Katolis, I guess. What can I do?”

“M’cane broke during the night,” she explains. “I don’t have a wagon, or a mule, or any family here to help me. Would you walk with me while I recover m’strength?”

Hardly progress, but it gives him an excuse to ignore his  _ other  _ responsibility for longer, and besides, if he can’t seem to do anything else he set out to do, he can at least help this person.

“I’d love to,” Soren concludes, and offers his elbow, as if to a date. 

As she takes his arm and puts her weight on it (and Soren is pretty sure he’s carried swords heavier than she is) she smiles -- gummy, but heartwarming.

“What’s your name?” He asks.

“Sorry? M’hearing is a bit--”

“Name?” Soren repeats, a bit louder, closer to her head.

“Ah! Call me Hylja.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Hylja,” Soren enunciates, ambling along the side of the road. Ahead, in the distance, he can just barely see the last few members of the caravan. It seems heartless, for them to leave her behind like this. Didn’t anyone notice her falling back in the night?

“Likewise! You know,” she observes, as if reading his mind, “sometimes it feels as if old women like me are just invisible.”

Soren grins and makes sure to point his mouth toward her ear when he says, “I guess that would make _ you _ a pretty good spy then! I’m Soren, by the way. Deputy Minister of Justice.” 

At least, for the moment, anyway. 

“Goodness!” She says, impressed. “I’d not have bothered you if I knew you were so important.”

“It’s no trouble at all,” he says.

“I suppose that explains why you looked so  _ focused _ when I found you,” Hylja says. “Were you looking for someone? A criminal, maybe?” Her bushy white eyebrows creep above the frames of her glasses with interest.

“Uh, yeah, actually.” Taking a chance, he says, “Not for uh… work, though. I was looking for my mom. She’s from Del Bar. About yea high, black and white hair in braids, blue eyes, dresses very mage-y, big fan of feathers? Her name is Sigrin. She’d probably be traveling with a couple of birds, though they tend to do what they want, they might not be sticking that close--

“Oh--”

Oh? Soren holds his breath.

“What did you say your name was? Sora?”

“Soren.”

“Soren,  _ kjaere, _ I’m very sorry,” Hylja’s gaze is downcast. “I know _ exactly  _ who you mean, but… she’s passed away.”

As much as he wants to prevent it, his arm tenses under her hand. For the sake of the old woman clinging to him, Soren tries to keep his composure, but he feels like his ribs are too small for lungs and he can’t get any air. The words tumble out, “What do you mean? How do you know?”

“I saw her -- the very woman, I’m sure of it. The dragon came, you see, and we all ran. The queen and the mage fought against the thing. We could all see them from the pass. Like a painting, it was.”

“But why?” Soren asks. “Why did they fight?”

“Don’t rightly know. I just want to live out m’days in peace,  _ kjaere,  _ don’t much care who’s in charge. Imagine I’ll miss some of those magic potions if we’re not allowed them anymore, good for the knees and all, but long as they don’t outlaw smoked fish and hot tea, reckon I’ll get by.”

“And you’re sure that she…”

“Can’t imagine as anybody could survive that, could they?” Hylja muses.

“It’s just…” Soren swallows. “She’s… was… my only family.”

“Only?” The woman’s crinkled forehead crinkles further as her eyebrows go up. “No... sisters?”

Soren nods. “Uh, yeah, actually, but my sister… Well, you know, now that I’m saying it out loud, I don’t really  _ know _ what happened to my sister.” He looks up at the sky, as if the clouds will rearrange themselves to soothingly spell  _ SHE’S ALIVE, IDIOT.  _ “I mean, here I am asking you if you’re  _ really sure  _ of what you saw, but if you asked  _ me _ the same thing, I wouldn’t be able to say anything. She was at the battle of the spire -- I don’t know if you heard about that -- and no one found her after, but that also means she  _ might _ still be out there.”

“See, now that’s a good attitude!” Hylja says, patting his arm comfortingly. “I wish you best of luck finding her, in any case. Better to know than not, wouldn’t you say?”

In the end, they chat all the way into town. He tries to get her talking, but she only wants to hear stories from  _ him -- _ about his dad, about his training and his time as a crownguard and his new job, about his sister -- she asks about a million questions. Fortunately, she doesn’t seem at all bothered by the dark magic thing, and she even listens to what he says about his dad with measured interest rather than horror.

He talks her ear off all the way to the nicest inn Soren can think of, but when he tries to leave her there and offers to pay for some room and board, she declines. 

“Oh,  _ kjaere,  _ what a sweetheart. I bet you have so many girlfriends. But, no, I’m not much for the ritzy places, you see. Is there anything a little more… rustic?”

“Are you sure?” Soren regards her with concern. “I wouldn’t want you to end up in a rough part of town or anything.”

Hylja laughs, which turns into a dry cough. “Oh, no need to worry about me, I’m quite used to it.”

“Well, if you insist,” Soren says, and brings her around elsewhere. 

When she finally picks a place, it really is _ incredibly  _ sketchy in Soren’s view, but she’s happy, so he’s not exactly going to argue. On the way out, he slips the innkeeper enough for a month’s room and board. 

The guy reaches for the coin sack, but Soren doesn’t let go. He warns: “She runs out of money, you send someone to tell me. Anyone bothers her, you send someone to tell me. Got it?”

“Wouldn’t expect a royal guest to stay in a place like this,” the guy grumbles back. 

“Are we clear?”

“Crystal.”

It isn’t until Soren is alone again, no longer having to perform stability and cheerfulness for a stranger, that it all really begins to sink in _ properly. _

Mom dead, dad dead, sister in the wind, Raum in trouble,  _ that guy  _ in charge, can’t even talk to Ezran without miss-rock and mister-tree listening in... 

He remembers far too late that he was supposed to visit Opeli, but when he imagines doing it, he wants to throw up. All he can think about is mom, staring down a dragon, and… then what? The woman didn’t actually tell him  _ how  _ she died. Was she eaten? Stomped? Burned? It was  _ like a painting,  _ apparently, so she must have put up a pretty dramatic fight at least. 

He doesn’t only avoid visiting Opeli, he avoids going to work that night at all, and instead hides away until the sun is solidly below the horizon. Someone knocks on his door, he ignores it until they go away and leaves that problem to future-Soren to solve in the hope that  _ he’ll  _ have enough room on his plate, because Now-Soren definitely doesn’t. 

The root of a plan begins to spread in the soil of his mind.

To fortify himself for it, he takes the “emergency can’t sleep” bottle of solar wine he’d hidden in his wardrobe. He sneaks out of his own door, and, careful to avoid being noticed (and  _ definitely  _ to avoid Corvus, Opeli, or  _ that guy)  _ into Claudia’s.

They may have dismantled all of dad’s stuff ( _ no,  _ **_you_ ** _ dismantled all of Dad’s stuff,  _ he reminds himself) but Claudia’s is basically untouched, a layer of dust already beginning to settle on the writing desk, on the wardrobe shelf with the earrings scattered across it like coins at a busker’s feet, on the piles of clothes and books strewn across the floor. It poufs into the air around him when he sits on the corner of the rumpled violet bedspread.

She didn’t make her bed the day they left. As a detail, it makes him feel strange, like he can imagine her standing right there, gathering her things, glancing around to make sure she didn’t forget anything, assuming blithely that she’d be sleeping in this same bed again before long.

Now, look at it all.

Maybe they’ve been too busy to take it all apart, or maybe they just forgot, or maybe they’ve been waiting for Soren to be the one to suggest going through her things and destroying them to make sure he’s really on their side. There never seems to be an end to the tests he has to pass, though it’s never  _ really  _ clear whether those are real or he’s just imagining them.

“So uh...” He says softly to the empty room, taking a deep draw off the bottle. His voice cracks. “Mom’s dead. I wish I could actually be the one to tell you, just because… it seems like the kind of thing where we should be together, doesn’t it? I mean, even if we’re mad at each other, or whatever, you come together for something like that. ‘Course, for all I know you might be dead too. Or not. Or you could be in trouble somewhere, or not. I mean, how the hell am I supposed to know where you went? It’s not like I can--”

Wait. 

_ Can _ he?

Claudia acted like it was a big deal, but aside from the whole tallest-mountain bit, it wasn’t that complicated, was it? He was there for the whole thing. The cave with the wisp bugs -- Soren might not consider himself the most brilliant guy in the world, but he’s got a good sense of direction, at least, and he remembers where  _ that _ was. She needed those, and the elf’s braid, and… was there anything else? What did she  _ say  _ when she did it?

No. No, what is he thinking? This is crazy. Even if he managed not to screw it up (which is the most likely scenario) he’d be a pariah. Of course, he’d be on a mountain by himself, no one would ever even see him or have to know, but on the other hand, they probably wouldn’t be thrilled about him just disappearing, either. 

On the  _ other  _ other hand, humans  _ are  _ at least kind-of allowed across the border now, and once he got out there into Xadia looking for her, who would ever find him?

_ No.  _ Ridiculous. Absolutely not. Dumb idea. 

Though, the hair part is easy enough. 

Soren grabs a brush tangled with huge wads of it off her nightstand and is in the middle of shoving it into his pocket when he hears the doorknob rattle. 

He jumps, looks around for a place to hide, realizes there isn’t one, and then realizes that whoever’s out there  _ surely  _ has less right or excuse to be here than he does, and--

“Narampu!?” Soren exclaims.

“Soren!?” She startles right back at him, no less shocked than he is.

“Ssh!” He hisses. “Close the door!”

Once that’s done, she hisses right back, “What are you doing here!?”

“Claudia’s  _ my  _ sister!” Soren justifies, though it should go without saying. “I can go in her room if I want to, the real question is what are  _ you  _ doing here!?”

Narampu looks around, swallows, chews her lip, basically acts about as suspicious as anyone could.

“I was on patrol and I heard a noise,” she tries. 

“Yeah, pull the other one next,” Soren admonishes.

“Okay, fine. You know what, maybe you can help me,” she says. “But you absolutely cannot tell  _ anyone.” _

“Yeah, yeah, lips: sealed,” Soren assures hastily. 

“The queen regent summoned Ylai and I in the middle of the night last night to tell us that Prince Callum did dark magic,” Narampu says, inches away from his face. “For, apparently, the second time? Ezran’s worried about him, ‘cause he says the  _ first _ time he just about died, and I’m here to--”

“--Try and find something to reassure him?”

“Yeah.” In her normal voice, if slightly lowered, she adds: “Everything else has been destroyed or locked away. I thought, maybe I could find some information… But you’re here. That’s even better. You must know  _ something.  _ I mean, blah blah dark magic bad, but like, mage-ette here wasn’t passing out every time she did anything, was she?”

“Is this some kind of trap?” 

She rolls her eyes dramatically. “Ezran’s scared for his brother. I’m sure you can identify. You clearly miss your sister enough to go hanging around drinking wine in her room.”

_ “Hey.” _

“Just saying.”

Truth be told, Soren’s glad that the picture he paints is of a morose-family-member and not a sneaky-traitor-considering-doing-very-illegal-and-gross-magic-as-a-last-resort, so he’ll take the excuse. 

Narampu gets more specific in her questioning. “When she first started, did she get sick, anything like what Ezran said happened to his brother?”

“I don’t know. I think she was like five the first time? She wanted to try it, mom wanted to teach her, dad thought she was too young, like it’d be dangerous or something.”

“And was it?” 

Soren shrugs. “Maybe mom taught her something that kept her safe, I don’t know. All I remember is--” Soren’s throat tightens, because the rest of the recollection comes back to him then. 

It’s one of the last completely happy memories he has of the four of them all together, actually. He never saw that first lesson, but he remembers Claudia going to bed early, like she had a cold, or something, and then she woke him up in the middle of the night. He was so sleepy at the time he can’t even recall what it was she actually dreamed about that had her so freaked out. 

He remembers mom teasing dad about it, and dad flat-out admitting he was wrong (a rare enough thing that it was easy to commit to memory) and mom was right. Both of them were proud of her for some reason, and Soren was proud of her too, mostly ‘cause he thought that was his job.

More than anything he just remembers drinking juice out of mom’s engraved carafe, sitting on the bed while they talked about dreams and magic and eventually tipping over and putting his head down, ‘cause he was tired still. 

If he closes his eyes, he can almost hear the sound of their voices, low and soft and happy like they were celebrating something. He can imagine the fine material of the blanket on his cheek, and his mom’s hand on his shoulder--

“Is?” Narampu asks. 

“Is nothing. It turned out fine,” he says quickly, setting down the bottle so he can fold his arms. He is  _ not  _ crying in front of the elf, it’s not happening, end of story. “Everything was fine. Hey, if a five-year-old girl can do it, is it possible Callum’s just a huge wuss?”

“Maybe it’s _ easier _ for a five-year-old girl?” Narampu posits. 

“Whatever,” Soren says. “Doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? What are they gonna do with him? They can’t exactly drag off a prince, can they?”

He tries to sound casual, but it’s important. If they can punish Callum, they can  _ definitely  _ punish Claudia. 

Or, come to it, Soren himself.

She only shakes her head. “I don’t know. I’m sure you’ll be hearing about it from your boss pretty soon. Might be up to  _ you  _ to decide, eh?”

Now  _ there’s  _ an uncomfortable thought. Narampu clearly gives up on getting anything further, because she gives him a shallow _ “thanks for trying, mum’s the word,”  _ and slips back out the door. 

When he’s alone again, he gives the room another look-over. How did that girl ever  _ find  _ anything in here, anyway? Being indignant makes it easier to not fall apart, so he clings to that as he pokes around for anything that might give him a hint about the details of tracking her and not killing himself in the process.

And hey, if he does die--no, he stops himself there, better not to indulge that.

Maybe (probably) he’ll screw it up and fail completely, but at least he’ll have tried. Maybe he’ll end up alone and unconscious on a mountaintop, but at least he’ll have tried, and maybe the wisps will lead him to a corpse, but  _ at least he’ll have tried. _

“Alright, Clauds,” he mutters to the empty room, taking a careless swig of wine and trying not to think about the last expression he saw on her face. He rests one hand on the pocket with the brush as he scans the scattered books. “Help me out here.”

* * *

The area outside the mage’s door is a pile of loose rocks under a cloud-white sky, and traversal is a challenge. The only thing holding back a landslide is probably the trees scattered around wherever their roots can manage to find dirt. 

Despite that, Claudia is happy to discover that it is busy with life: leaferrets camouflage themselves in the branches, frilled solizards fearlessly bask on warm boulders, and stonegulls battle for the abundant fish in the creeks where they pass above-ground.

Still, the only  _ life  _ that really matters right now is the one that  _ isn’t  _ out here: dragons. The area is just as dragon-less as Sal promised, which is all she cares about, because she isn’t out here for components, or food, or even fresh air.

Claudia is out here to put as much physical distance between herself and her father as possible, while stopping just  _ short  _ of being stupid about it. She would always have turned back at the first sign of real trouble, but it’s a relief that she doesn’t have to.

Just down the slope from where she starts, she spies her target: an enormous rocky outcrop stabbing forth from the mountainside, jutting out past the woods entirely and coming to a point in the thin air. It forms a jagged dolomite cliff that gives the impression of a spear, or a broken bridge, and from there she should be able to get a clear view of the south side of the mountain.

It’s  _ cold _ this far south and this high up, the first leaves are even starting to turn, but her cloak is enchanted for additional warmth, which should give her some added sitting-on-a-cliff-not-talking-to-dad time before she gets too cold and has to go back inside.

She keeps coming back to one thing from his big stupid revelation to her, which is actually several things. No matter how she looks at the situation, she can’t seem to get the ball of astonished humiliation out of her throat.

_ He was lying to her, too. _

He was lying to her, too! And he thought she bought it! It beggars belief. 

His  _ performance  _ in that cell was hardly the lie of the century, after all. She’s seen puddles deeper than that act. At the moment, she’d imagined this was deliberate -- a clever play on Soren’s tendency not to pick up on subtext when he’s not looking for it, an illusion crafted to strike above her brother’s threshold of perception and below her own.

She could have sworn she heard it in his voice beneath his words, the winking,  _ work with me, we’ll talk about it later,  _ and she was there to catch what was thrown to her.

They were a  _ team  _ at that moment, she thought. Somehow, she imagined the entire thing, and that’s what nauseates her.

If he’d told the truth, she’d have had to turn against him. That was --she _ thought _ \-- the genius of it. If he’d said  _ oh yes I did say to kill the princes and here’s why, _ it wouldn’t have mattered what came next, he’d give her no choice but to side with Soren, but if he lied, and she  _ went along _ with the lie, it could keep them all unified at least long enough to deal with the bigger threat, and the rest could be pieced back together in the aftermath. 

The whole  _ kill the princes  _ thing was upsetting to begin with, but there’d only be time to talk about that, to find a better way to achieve the otherwise reasonable goal of having a competent adult in charge, _ if  _ they weren’t splintered then, in that moment. Later, she’d apologize to Soren, and he would understand, because he’d see how everything turned out okay.

(That’s another thing she’s bitter about: realizing that she never really accounted for the possibility that it wasn’t going to be okay.)

There’d been no doubt in her mind _ all this time  _ that they’d been a team there, and to find out how profoundly  _ wrong  _ she was, that he’d just lumped her in with Soren in the  _ idiots I can manipulate with the shallowest of lies to get the necessary result  _ category is just one of the most embarrassing thing she’s ever experienced.

What’s really maintained the stony silence between them for the last several days is primarily the yawning chasm between how she thought they saw one another, versus how they actually, apparently did. 

She’d thought he trusted her. She’d thought his actions were well-thought out. Neither of those things were true, and getting past this is going to be on her, stupidly. It’s going to be on her to adjust to that reality. 

“Didn’t even have a plan for fixing things with Soren,” she mutters under her breath as she rummages through her bag.

Finding what she was looking for, Claudia pulls out a folded piece of paper that she found in the library: an old map of the city and the mountain. 

This map is rather different than the ones she’s accustomed to. At the corner is a miniature depiction of the whole continent, but the eastern area -- the mountains, the far reaches, and the rest -- is sketched in much more detail and with some rather significant departures from the maps they have in Katolis. 

The mountains stretch much farther south, and little symbols denote important landmarks missing entirely from the maps back home. On the other hand, the western side is not only vague, but outright  _ wrong  _ in several important respects. 

Among other things, the map seems to suggest that following the hum has led them in a direction that isn’t  _ quite  _ due south from where they started, but actually a few degrees east as well, explaining how they wound up all the way here when their path bent.

With the sound to guide them, no one even bothered with more objective navigation.

Beyond even that, there is a much more obvious way that this map is unique: it indicates a river (with little symbols of houses and boats next to it in places) just below the cliff she’s sitting on.

On hands and knees at the edge, she can see the ground below, and there is nothing but more rocks and trees where the mountain falls away and slides out again.

The river-line on the map is thick, and a little boat is drawn beside it. This is no tiny stream that dries up between seasons, surely. It extends all the way south and into the sea. 

She looks over the edge again.  _ Definitely _ no river, no riverbed, no ruins, nothing.

“It’s underground,” Aaravos’ voice startles her and she jumps, right at the damn edge.

Recovering, Claudia grumbles, “Stop  _ doing  _ that. I don’t want to talk to _ you  _ either.”

“Don’t you want me to solve your little map problem?” There is mirth underpinning his voice, amusement at her struggle that isn’t helping. He bends over where she has the map spread out and pinned to the ground by her bag. “I know you’re curious.”

“I think you’ve done  _ enough _ problem-solving,” she says at first, but after a moment, she feels an irritated scowl cross her face and she revises. “Fine. What.”

Aaravos lowers himself into a cross-legged pose near the right edge of the triangle of the cliff. “Your  _ human _ maps this far east are a thousand years old at least. The river isn't even half that.” He considers for a moment.

“Let me guess, you were there,” she deadpans.

Aaravos shrugs at the same time, as if to say,  _ can’t exactly help being old.  _ “Tieral, an Earth dragon, fell in love with an Ocean dragon named Sonhai. Tieral bored through the mountain, and Sonhai redirected the springs. The lovers reshaped the continent just so that they could meet. It  _ could  _ take you south much faster, but once you start, you would have to follow it all the way to the end.”

“That thing with the dragons sounds like a fairytale.”

“Sometimes the truth is stranger than a story,” Aaravos comments distantly. 

Claudia frowns. “Don’t you _ hate _ dragons?”

“Only mostly. They aren’t  _ all  _ bad,” he qualifies. “It’s only that most of the decent ones are at the very  _ bottom _ of the pecking order and don’t  _ dare _ say anything when their betters do terrible things. They know what happens to those who do.”

“Well that doesn’t exactly make  _ them _ good either, then, does it, if they just stand by and watch to avoid getting their claws dirty?”

“No, it doesn’t.” His smirk at that is strangely satisfying, like a compliment from a teacher. “But at least a selfish creature can be persuaded to act in its own interest. Do you know I  _ recommended  _ that he lie to you?”

“I don't care.” She folds up the map carefully instead of looking at Aaravos, trying not to damage the aging parchment. “It’s not about that, and dad made his choices. If you’re just out here to stick up for him, you can go away, I’m not interested.”

Aaravos leans forward until he’s just past the invisible border that marks out a  _ comfortable distance _ . “I called you an asset, and it was the  _ only _ time he ever  _ really _ fought me. He was desperate, the  _ world _ was at stake, and  _ that  _ was his line in the sand. Did he tell you that?”

Claudia scoots a little further away. “What do  _ you _ care, anyway?”

“I…” Aaravos’ eyes flick wider for a brief moment, and his ears drop. “He reminds me of someone.”

“You  _ do  _ realize that doesn’t give me  _ any _ helpful information?” She almost laughs. “It’s just spooky and mysterious for no reason.”

Aaravos stands up, and it is his turn to scowl. He brushes himself off. With an edge on his voice, he says, “I  _ had _ a  _ plan  _ that I clung to for a century. When I asked what he wanted most, I  _ expected _ the usual: money, love, violence. Proxies, stepping stones to power.”

“But?” She looks up at him. Speaking this way, with his arms folded, he looks like a djinni from one of her storybooks.

“Oh, he wanted power, but in his case--”

“The power  _ was _ the stepping stone,” Claudia says, getting a step ahead, because, well…  _ duh.  _ Aaravos wasn’t there when she was growing up, when she would come up with fantasies about being a famous mage.  _ The goal is not to be famous, Claudia,  _ dad used to say.  _ The goal is to be productive, to be useful. _

“What he wanted was so  _ familiar,”  _ Aaravos says, as if to himself. He looks out at the sky. “It’s going to rain.”

“Fine,” Claudia concedes. 

He’s right, of course. It’s already started drizzling by the time she gets back to the door. 

When she was little, dad made her solve this puzzle with nine dots, three-by-three, where she had to connect them all in four pen strokes without lifting her pen from the paper. The solution was to go outside the lines. The point was not to be hemmed in by what she sees, to look at a rock and a hard place and find a way out anyway, a  _ creative solution.  _

There had to have been something more elegant than  _ killing  _ them, but no matter how she wants to, she’ll never get the chance to go back in time and work it out. 

Claudia doesn’t have to go far to find her father. He’s right there in the library when she makes it to the bottom of the steps, searching through some dusty book in the soft orange glow of the lightball mounted on the reading stand. 

He turns just as she hits the bottom of the mezzanine steps (Aaravos had been just ahead of her, where did he go so fast?) and she puts out her hands. 

“Don’t… say anything,” she says, holding her resolve. “Don’t argue. Don’t debate. Just let me get through this.”

To his credit, he  _ doesn’t  _ say anything, he just sits gingerly down on a bench by the platform lectern, and Claudia takes her own seat on the other end of it. The space between them is maybe a foot and a half, but it might as well be a mile.

She was always more comfortable this way, looking off in the same direction for a serious talk, instead of having to make eye contact. 

“Soren always thought you were so harsh on him, and for a long time I didn’t see it, because it always felt like _ I  _ was the one with all the heavy expectations, the pressure. But now that I really think about it, I see all the times you dismissed him, and  _ I _ picked up the habit too. It’s like, I was just taking on that trash you were handing me and then handing it on to Soren to carry, and that wasn’t fair to either of us.

“But like, you  _ died  _ and you’ve been…  _ comparatively  _ okay since we’ve been traveling, at least more than you used to be, so now  _ I  _ feel like a jerk if I make a big deal out of things, which somehow  _ also  _ feels manipulative? Like you’re only bringing it up now because you have this  _ oh but now I’m changing  _ defense? But it still sucks for  _ me. _ You got to set your burden down when you told me, but now I have to carry it. Again.”

He stares at the weave of the rug beneath the bench for a solid minute, and then says, “May I?”

“Yeah.”

“I know. That was one of the reasons that it took so long. I worried that telling you was the crueler of the two options.”

“And the other reason was being scared and selfish?”

There’s a laugh, at that, just a little one, closed-mouthed. “A bit on the nose, but…”

“Do you know what makes me the maddest of all?” She grips her own kneecaps. 

He doesn’t ask the question out loud, but his face encourages her to continue. 

“That I  _ can’t  _ be  _ that _ mad. I want to… flip a table. But every angle I come at it from, I just keep being like, what other choice was there? I mean, yeah, you could have tried to convince me, but what if I got all stubborn about it? And, let’s be honest, you  _ needed  _ me on board.”

“True,” he admits, examining his own hands, transparent in his contemplation of his own pulse. 

“The stakes were too high to risk it,” Claudia says. “I  _ hate  _ that I get it, but I get it. Just… is there anything  _ else?” _

“Else?” 

“Any other big scary secrets. Feeling this way? Sucks, and I’d like to get it over with, so if there’s any more world-changing stuff, now’s the time.” She crosses her arms and finds herself fascinated with the illustration on the page-edges of a book, the kind of thing you can only see when the book is closed. 

Her father’s mouth purses for a moment. “I’m afraid I don’t know what that might be.” 

“Do you love Soren?”

“What? Of course.”

Claudia presses. “Why did you tell him to do it and not me?”

He leans away from her, on the arm of the bench. “You’re not going to like it.”

“Well, isn’t that what we’re doing?” 

“It’s… difficult,” he says, resisting. 

So, Claudia thinks, this was pointless. She moves to stand, pushing off of the arm and taking a step away from it. “It’s fine. I’ll just go--”

“No, wait. I’ll--I thought it would be harder for you,” he hurries, “because you’re younger, and closer to the princes, and--”

_ “Are you going to say what you mean or not!?” _ She shouts, bringing a fist down on the nearest surface, but the volume is swallowed by the books and the furnishings. Not even a cannonball could get an echo in here.

She was probably thirteen the last time she actually raised her voice at him in anger. She knows better than that. She  _ knows  _ better than that, and they’re both a little stunned. 

“Fine,” says Viren, gathering himself. “I was aware that the boy was interested in you -- one would have to be _spectacularly_ obtuse to _not_ be aware -- I have seldom in my life met a more unsubtle young man -- and I was concerned that you would either reciprocate that interest or, at least, be softened by it. It was far better to have him focused on you and not on protecting his brother. It was a… sleight of hand.”

“But with people.”

“Yes.”

“That’s kind of messed up.”

“Claudia--”

“I know, I know, saving the world, all costs,” she says, throwing her hands up and sitting, exasperated, back down on the bench. There is a beat of the kind of silence usually only found underwater. Looking at him,  _ really  _ looking at him, she asks, “what do you think’s happened to it? The world?”

“I don’t know. I fear my failure has had a great price. I cannot begin to tell you how--” He lets out a strained, trapped breath. The reins come off and frustration is allowed back into his mouth. “It feels as though everything that has happened since I lost Harrow has been one fruitless sacrifice after another, feeding everything I have, including my _ own children,  _ into this endless devouring maw, thinking that if just I did that  _ one next thing _ that was necessary, no matter how unpleasant it was,  _ that one next thing  _ would be what finally made it work, made it mean something. I would end the threat to humanity in Harrow’s name, and history would know that  _ killing him  _ was when Xadia finally, _ truly went too far. _ I wanted them to regret every wrong they did to us, but none more than that one.”

She draws a deep, dusty breath. “You...  _ really _ cared about him.”

“Yes,” her father says, with as much pain in that single word as in the entire diatribe that came before it. 

“You just have to promise me one thing,” Claudia says, tired.

“What is it?”

“If we ever see Soren again, you tell him everything, and I mean  _ right away _ . He needs to know he isn’t stupid, or crazy, or whatever. Deal?” She extends a hand, only to notice the state of her fingernails -- bitten, their paint badly chipped. 

When he takes it to shake on it, she pulls him into a hug (awkward, because of the arrangement of the bench, but it doesn’t matter.)

Over her shoulder, he whispers, “Deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that is Book Earth! I know it's more of an emotional season finale than an action-packed one, but hey, I always forget exactly where the border between seasons 1-2 and 2-3 are, so I'll use consistency with the show as my excuse. :-)
> 
> Housekeeping:
> 
> Firstly, there _was_ going to be a moonfam next steps wrap-up AND a Lux Aurea wrap-up in this chapter (the latter of which was fully written) but they didn't quite fit and the chapter was already over 10,000 words so I decided we'll dig into that stuff early next season instead. 
> 
> Secondly, I don't anticipate a big break between seasons here, ain't nobody gotta renew me, I renew myself lol. I'll probably take a little time to revise my plan, since this season didn't perfectly map onto the pre-plotted stuff and adjustments will have to be made, but I don't plan to make you wait too long. 
> 
> Thirdly, if you're side-eyeing Hylja, I fully encourage you to google her name.
> 
> Fourthly, The bird image is just a photo (marked ok for general use according to google) that I ran through a free "sketch on parchment" filter. I thought it would be fun to throw in there.


	10. Book Five: Star | Chapter One: Interstellar Dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The one secret of life and development is not to devise and plan but to fall in with the forces at work — to do every moment's duty aright ___  
>  **―George MacDonald**

**Book Five: Star**

**Chapter 1: Interstellar Dust**

It begins with helping someone.

Sigrin doesn’t intend to become the nucleus of the thing, but even if she knew in advance that it would go that way, she would probably do it all the same. 

Perhaps more accurately, it begins with the irresistible opportunity to be a smartass  _ and  _ be helpful, both at the same time, in only six words:

“I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

She has been at the Stone & Key for one week, renting out (and recuperating in) the half-furnished attic above what could, if one were feeling very charitable, be called a dining room. It is small, dimly lit at all hours of the day, and cluttered with a mish-mash of wobbly chairs and tables whose only commonality is their well-aged patina of grime.

The concealment only comes off within those walls. Illusions have never been her strong-suit, so as much as it’d be safer to keep it up all the time, it’s just impossible, especially in her weakened state and with only the components she could carry undetected. (Her appearance of frailty with Soren wasn’t entirely an affectation.)

Her disguise is good practice, she jokes to herself, for when she becomes a crone for real, an early start at developing her  _ crone-sona.  _ Or is that  _ per-crone-a?  _

She can workshop it later.

“Ex _ cuse _ me?” Her fellow patron twists in his chair so far that his spine sounds like a trod-upon twig. She’s got his attention, and that of his customer, both seated a table away. At this part of the afternoon, the three of them are the only people here, outside of the owner.

Despite the innate claustrophobia of this part of town -- with its tight clusters of buildings and roads so narrow the sun never touches the cobbles -- there is a certain comfort in the neighborhood. People take care of their own, and mind their own business here, particularly when certain businesses have had new prohibitions placed on them and violators vanish without warning. 

The last thing these two likely expected was an eavesdropper, but she can’t bring herself to keep quiet.

“I said,” Sigrin repeats, “I wouldn’t -- buy it, I mean.”

The salesman, wearing a flat cap with platinum hair sticking out around the edges, rests an elbow on the back of his chair. “Oh yeah? You got a problem with a little commerce between friends?”

“Of course not, but either you’re scamming this friend, or you’ve _ been  _ scammed yourself.”

Concerned lines appear on  _ both  _ foreheads. So, it’s the latter.

Sigrin sniffs the air theatrically. “Do you smell that?”

The two of them wrinkle their noses, sniffing.

“I don’t smell anything,” says the prospective customer, a heavyset man with a wooden earring. 

“Exactly,” she answers. She wears five cross-body coin-purses, and now she reaches into the orange one and pulls out a little vial. She uncorks it, and with one badly-damaged hand, wafts it at them before corking it again. 

Both of them recoil, coughing. The salesman gags. As she corks the vial and tucks it away again, they both drink deeply of their beers, an instinct to get the odor out of their throats. 

“What are you, crazy?” The salesman protests, batting the air in front of his face to disperse the smell. “What  _ is  _ that?”

_ “That’s  _ what blue solcrab haemolymph ought to smell like,” she says, “when it’s been kept properly. If it doesn’t stink, it’s useless.”

The salesman and the customer regard each other warily. Sigrin has finished her stew and sees her cue to leave before things get rough, as they do around here from time to time. 

“Wait--” Says the customer.

She turns. 

“It’s my sister. She had twins, a few hours ago. But she’s bleeding too much. Physician says there’s nothing more he can do, and he used to know a midwife who knew a little magic, who he’d call in a situation like this, but he hasn’t seen her. Doesn’t know if she got disappeared or just went away somewhere, ‘cause of… you know.”

“And,” Sigrin narrows her eyes and rests her hand on the mantle of the smoke-stained fireplace.  _ “You  _ were going to try a spell?”

The man shrugs uncomfortably. “Sure. I mean, yeah, people say it’s bad or whatever, but who cares? If I can help her, I’m gonna. The doc says he remembers what his buddy used to do, kind of, and said he’d explain it, even if he didn’t want to try it himself. Way I see it, who better than me to give it a shot? _ I  _ ain’t got any kids, and there’s no time to find--”

“Shit, sorry,” says the salesman, “I swear, I didn’t know it wasn’t good. I’m not a mage! All I know about all this gross crap is that people pay a lot more for it now that it’s illegal.”

“Anyway...” The customer looks at her, implication loud in the air, fidgeting with the edge of his sleeve.

As if she could say no? This is her wheelhouse. This is  _ normalcy. _ She might as well be at home. It doesn’t even occur to her that anything could be amiss until after she’s in the man’s house, already done, and the guy thanks her effusively, saying he’s  _ so glad she didn’t think it was a sting. _

A  _ sting!  _ It  _ could _ have been a sting -- and it would have been a good one. The emotional appeal, the time pressure, if Sigrin were trying to catch someone like herself doing dark magic, that’s exactly how she’d do it. 

That, or she’d get guys like this one to report on the person who helped them, which she now has to consider an ongoing risk. It’d be simple enough for them to leverage that sister, with her babies. If he’d do something  _ illegal  _ to save them, surely he’d do something legally required for the same reason.

In the privacy of her attic room, she drinks a glass of godawful plonk and it all rolls out before her like a perfect map. 

This is what they want: distrust, paranoia, danger, fake components flooding and disrupting an already tiny, delicate market. They want people confused, afraid, and isolated, policing one another out of the fear of being policed themselves. 

They want clear and obvious opponents, so that those loyal to the new rule can see a clear bridge to safety if they only walk over the bodies of the public enemies to get there. (And if there aren’t any, who’s to say they can’t invent some to build that bridge? It’s easy enough: just lower the threshold of what counts as disloyalty until they’re satisfied.)

They’ve learned from history. 

Xadia drove humans into a barren land, and they didn’t give up, they built their world all over again from the ground up.

Xadia burned the libraries to the ground, and humans just started telling their stories from the start, still to this day in the process of rewriting every book.

Even the western mage wars only delayed the inevitable, but  _ this? _ They’ve taken the opportunity given to them by the battle across the border to present humanity with a new villain to hate: itself. 

* * *

Amaya looks deliberately away from Gren’s interpretation of the third --or is that fourth?-- speech being made from the foot of the Sun Throne. For anyone else, it wouldn’t mean much, but for her, it’s like telling him to shut up, or slamming a door.

“You okay?” Gren checks in when she looks back, not startled that she’s brusque, but concerned at how suddenly her mood shifted from earlier in the day. Besides, she doesn’t usually direct it at  _ him. _

She purses her lips and shifts Gren by the shoulders so that he stands between her and Kazi. Whatever she wants to say, she clearly doesn’t want it understood by  _ anyone _ else. Gren glances back and shrugs. Kazi, bless their heart, shrugs back good-naturedly. 

Amaya’s movements are restrained when she says, hands moving fast and tight, “The last time I was in this room, I thought I was going to lose my eyes, and now I have to stand here and smile for a bunch of unimportant yammering. I know it seems like I’ve been in worse scrapes than that and it shouldn’t be a big deal, but…”

She stops short and shrugs, her mouth a thin line. 

“Jumpy. I get it,” Gren answers. He suggests, “Do you need to step out? I can make it about me if you want. Remember that time I pretended to faint, so you could--”

“No,” Amaya signs brusquely, “What would I even do? Go back to that little gilded cage they’ve had me trapped in?”

“It’s--”

“I know, I know, it isn’t like that. It just feels like every time I want to go somewhere, there’s someone watching over my shoulder. Including…” She jerks her head over Gren’s shoulder, to where Kazi’s standing. 

He only shrugs. “They seem nice to me, but if you say be careful, I’ll be careful.”

“Everyone seems nice to you, and you should  _ always  _ be careful.” Her expression is playful, though, so it can’t be _ that _ serious of a suspicion. 

Over their heads, the Sunforge swirls with shifting patterns of light and dark, reminding Gren of riding in and out of cloud cover on the plains. Left to its own devices, he’s been told that it would eventually shrug off the corruption, self-cleansing little by little -- even now, the shadowy fever has clearly broken -- but the process is taking much longer than anyone is apparently comfortable with.

And anyway, as Amaya joked with Janai this morning during yet another meet-and-greet, surely the fact that the repair allows the new king-from-today to do something dramatic and history-making at his coronation is  _ entirely  _ a coincidence?

Gren presses on interpreting the speech, just in case Amaya has any desire to check in on what’s happening on the dais, but he doesn’t take it personally when she doesn’t pay very close attention.

Xankar, Janai’s brother and the new ruler of Lux Aurea, comes off at first glance as a midpoint on the sibling spectrum, if the stories Gren’s heard about the former queen are true. He is not as cold as Khessa reportedly was, but he has a similar streak of nationalism, and he is not as practical as Janai, but shares her ten-ton sense of duty. His carriage and demeanor is warmer and gentler than either of them, a trait that radiates outward from his large, soft frame. Even the unusual curl of his horns seems to suggest a certain comity.

Of course, this is only his public persona, and Janai doesn’t seem entirely comfortable standing by him. She is regal and purposeful, but there is an undercurrent of tension, as if she’s also ready for the unexpected. Gren supposes that the “real Xankar” could be anybody.

The whole place is covered in so much gold he could swear he can smell it, though when he said as much before, Kazi was very clear that what he’s really smelling is the copper and steel underneath the gold plate -- they assured him that even Lux Aurea does not have so much gold that it’s all solid. (“Actually,” they went so far as to say, “pure gold does not have a smell at all, and it doesn’t make a very good building material.”)

As impressive as it all is now, Gren is even more excited to see what it will look like in its intended state, after the Sunforge is purified. The whole room thrums with anticipation when the freshly crowned King Xankar starts to transform. 

The metamorphosis begins with a glow from beneath his skin. Janai and the other Sunfire soldiers made great showing of their “heat-being” forms at the battle of the spire, but this is something else entirely. His skin does not crack, but rather  _ speckle,  _ as though the pure white light is finding its way through channels in his dark flesh and emerging in tiny beams through his pores.

His diaphanous, layered white-and-gold robes (a stark contrast to the armored look preferred by his sister) are no obstacle at all for the light, which grows until it is painful to look at him.

_ “All kneel!” _ Booms a voice from the dais in front of the throne. Gren interprets the command for Amaya, and they both fall to one knee with the rest of the gathered crowd. There is a clatter that ripples out behind them as elves in ceremonial armor all drop to the metallic floor. Thanks to their diplomatic status, they were given a spot close to the action. It isn’t only the room that’s packed, but the corridor, and the steps, and even the ground-level path and parks below. Lux Aurea wants to see the moment it gets its nexus back.

“What is he doing?” Amaya asks, squinting, turning her head away so that she can still see Gren’s and Kazi’s hands.

“It’s a very rare ability, the best way I can explain it is that he can become a being of light.” Kazi responds, both spoken and signed. “To my knowledge there are seldom more than a few Sunfire elves in the world at a time who can do this. Some believe he was born destined for--”

The light is overwhelming and Gren is forced to close his eyes as a high-pitched whine seems to start from somewhere far away. It gets closer, louder, and there is shifting and rustling as the crowd grows uncomfortable, a reminder that even the Sunfire elves only know in theory what is happening, that none of them have ever seen something like this before. 

All at once, the whine stops with a gentle  _ crack,  _ at the end. He tries to open his eyes, but if it was too bright before, it’s even more hopeless now. All he can do is throw his elbow over his face and hope for the best as a gust of air sweeps through the room. A hand -- Amaya’s, he knows without looking -- lands on his shoulder, and he puts his own on top of it, a silent reassurance that he’s still here. 

The wind is so strong he can hardly breathe and he braces, wondering how Kazi is faring, if they’ve kept their kneeling posture or fallen down. At last, the assault eases, and at the sound of the same voice from before saying  _ “All rise!”  _ he stands, hesitantly blinking like a newborn. 

“It’s back!” Kazi says in a reverent whisper. When Gren looks over, he’s almost sure there’s a mistiness behind their glasses. 

They aren’t the only one, either. Around the room, Sunfire elves break into tears, whoops of victory, and thrilled embraces. The now-King Xankar leans on Janai, smiling but exhausted in much the way of a new mother straight after a birth, and with his blessing, the crowd begins to disperse. 

Janai says something to her brother -- Gren doesn’t catch it, but Amaya’s lip-reading skills come in handy and in a rare moment,  _ she  _ interprets for  _ him.  _

“She asked if he was okay, if he needed any help, and he’s saying…” Amaya’s hands stop suddenly and her brows knit together, a line appearing between them. 

“He said what?” 

“Nothing,” Amaya signs abruptly. “It doesn’t matter.” 

Gren nudges her. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t have to. 

She ignores him and taps Kazi on the shoulder instead. 

“I have to ask you to take me back to my chambers, right?” Amaya exaggerates the movements of her hands in a falsely saccharine, scraping sort of way. “So that everybody knows where I am all the time?”

Kazi nods. “Well, technically, you don’t have to, but I’m afraid it is… expected.”

Amaya only gestures broadly for them to lead the way. 

With Kazi walking ahead, there’s no chance of them noticing what Amaya and Gren are saying, but Amaya still glances around for reflective surfaces before she moves her hands like she’s going to say something, but then drops them again. 

“What did he say?” Gren insists, and when she tenses up again, he nudges her in the elbow, which gets a weak smile. Still, a weak smile is better than none at all. 

_ “Go keep an eye on your little human woman.” _

Gren bursts out laughing, which gets Kazi to turn around quizzically, but fortunately they let it drop and continue down a long white path and into a covered walkway with a golden ceiling held up on pillars. 

Once they’re looking the other way, Gren says,  _ “You?” _

“I  _ know,”  _ Amaya replies, but Gren’s giggle-based dismissal of the concept seems to have loosened her up a little and she’s gone from scowling to smiling and shaking her head. “It’s better than ‘ _ pet,’  _ I guess. I really don’t mean to be a sourpuss, I think I’m just getting bored of fancy dinners and ceremonies and having to pretend to laugh at those kinds of things .”

“Not exactly your natural habitat,” Gren agrees. 

“No. It was my sister’s. I keep thinking how much better she’d be at this, and asking myself, what would Sarai do?”

“She believed in peace. She’d be proud of what you’ve accomplished, I’m sure of it,” he offers. He almost adds something, but then stops short because it’s a completely insane thing to say. 

Unfortunately, Amaya catches him. “What? What?”

“No, it’s crazy. I was just thinking of something you’d like better, but it’s crazy.”

“I could use a little crazy.”

Gren snickers as he signs, “You should fight him.”

“Who?”

“Xankar.”

“I should  _ fight the king?  _ You’re right, that’s crazy.”

“Well, you know, how they do those sparring duels? Safe, friendly, obviously. Wouldn’t be boring,” Gren says, “and imagine if you won. He’d have to take you seriously. Everyone would.”

Amaya’s got a genuine smirk on now, which is progress. “Why would he even agree to that?”

“If it was just for fun? Do you really think he’d ever live it down if he declined a human’s challenge? Can you imagine?”

The look on her face says she  _ can  _ imagine, and that, in fact, someone giving her permission to imagine beating the tar out of some high-and-mighty person (unlikely as it is to actually happen) is exactly what she needs just now. 

At the door to Amaya's guest suite, Kazi once again points out the (gold, of course) bell she can ring any time she needs anything.

As part of the new-peace hospitality, they’ve given her something that is apparently standard issue for Sunfire elves who lose, or are born without, their hearing: a re-writable tablet. The tablet itself is made of some kind of purified metal with a coating Gren can’t identify (and that Kazi says somehow involves Sun magic) and it is paired with a matching calligraphy brush. There’s no ink, she simply writes on the tablet and the words appear, and then vanish a few moments later. 

The convenience is staggering, and Gren doubts that Amaya will want to leave without it. Either they’ll give it to her as a gift when she eventually goes home, or she’ll _sneak_ it out by any means necessary.

They say their goodbyes at the door -- brief ones, since they’ll see one another again at the coronation reception in an hour or two -- and Amaya dismisses Gren until then.

When he thinks about it, he might be getting a little bored too. 

Fortunately, Kazi’s got him covered with an invitation to a pre-reception drink in the park at the foot of the Sunforge tower (clearly wanting to get another, longer look at it now that it’s healed.) He gleefully accepts, though he does sheepishly ask if they could stay in the shade of one of those red trees. He’s on his third layer of sunburn now and trying very hard not to make things any worse. 

The weather is good (as it almost always seems to be) and the public mood is soaring, so they’re not the only ones out for a picnic. The manicured lawn is dotted with families at play, students reading in the sun, and trainees jogging in laps. It really isn't so different to a human city. If Gren let his eyes go out of focus a bit, he could almost be at home.

It takes a moment to find a decent place to sit, but when the grass is beneath him, he asks, “How are Janai’s lessons going?”

“Oh,” Kazi nods. “Excellent. I never expected her to study so diligently. Actually I was a little dubious she would study at all. Her previous tutors suggested that linguistics were not an area of interest, but I suppose she is now more... motivated. She  _ does  _ get frustrated, but fortunately she has yet to take out that frustration on  _ me. _ ”

Gren laughs when he imagines it. “Well, I’d be happy to take a couple shifts if you need a break. I’m happy to interpret, but it’s been nice, with both of us around, having backup. I’d like to return the favor.”

After a brief, comfortable silence, Kazi agrees with that also: “It has, hasn’t it? Been nice, I mean. I was so afraid to meet General Amaya the first time, but she and you -- especially you -- are not at all what I was told humans would be like.”

Gren snorts. “Do I want to know?”

“Primitive, prone to evil… the Lucet may not be fond of the dragons, but they don’t like humans very much either.”

“The what?”

“Oh! I apologize. It is a sect, or… political faction. I try not to get involved in such things, as a scholar I feel I should avoid bias, but my family are members, you see, so I hear quite a lot of their perspective. They _are_ very happy today. Rumors are flying that our new king is a secret member.”

Gren takes a sip of his wine and focuses on the important part. “They… don’t like dragons?”

“Er, well, it’s nothing violent, if that’s what you mean. They just think we should rule ourselves, stop doing what the dragons tell us to do. The general idea is just that it was once a mutually beneficial arrangement, but is no longer. Nobody _ really  _ listened to them until recently, when your, er--”

“Right, right,” Gren says. “I heard what happened.”

They push their glasses up their nose. “The dragons did not come to our aid, then, which has led some to wonder if the Lucet were not right all along. My mother goes on and on about it. They are clearly gaining steam.”

“But they don’t like humans, either?” This is valuable information, and he has to admit, he likes the way they deliver it. Gren wonders if Kazi would ever be interested in teaching back in Katolis.

“No one does, I’m afraid. It is funny, I have taken the human side in classroom debate time and again, but it was frightening to meet one in person nevertheless. I suppose I am not immune to my own environment. It is good to have a chance to practice what I preach…” They look down at their own reflection into the wine, and then pointedly back at Gren. “Of course, to be candid, I must admit that  _ you _ make it rather easy.”

Gren feels his cheeks grow warm, imagining he’d have gone pink if he wasn’t already well-colored from the sunburn. 

Maybe Amaya is right to worry about the possibility of being watched, or controlled, and he trusts her intuition enough to keep a weather eye open, but there doesn’t seem to be any harm in enjoying the moment. 

Isn’t that what all this peace-making was for to begin with? 

* * *

There is one table in Sigrin’s little attic hideaway: round, wobbly, unfinished, and no bigger than the circle of her arms. Fanned out on top of it is a series of identical envelopes, the result of a meticulous rationing. Careful to avoid a splinter from the table edge (she’s already had two) she slides one envelope from the spread like choosing a card from a deck. Except that in this deck, every card has the same value. 

Inside each one is the bare minimum of dark magic components needed for her  _ Hylja  _ disguise (as determined by a few experiments) now spread as thinly as possible without compromising the spell.

In the fortnight since her careless trip to a stranger’s home, she has used ten of these, and only another eight remain.

Really, she’s only got two choices.

One is to depend primarily on more primitive means -- a drastic haircut, a change of wardrobe and name -- and hope it’s enough to go unrecognized. On the minus side, winter’s still too far out to plausibly wear thick scarves and hoods. On the plus, however, the tide of refugees continues unabated, and blending into a throng of other foreigners might be doable. 

Still, there’s always the risk of being recognized anyway. 

The second option poses a different risk: an illegal purchase of more components. She’s never been the cloak-and-dagger type, never had to be, and it’s anxiety-producing, unfamiliar territory. 

Whatever the answer is, she’s not going to find it in here, at any rate. Hiding away longer is only going to delay the inevitable. She tears open the envelope she’s been turning over in her hands and pours the contents into her palm, bruising them against her skin. A few murmured words later, she is down the stairs and out the door for the first time in three days. 

Around her, the market flows, a human river babbling along in against the awnings that form the brightly-colored shores.

She thinks she’s clever, dropping complaints into conversation with shopkeepers about the maladies of old age that used to be commonly resolved with magic, but if it occurs to any of them to admit they know where she might go for such a thing, they certainly don’t show it. 

There’s no trust, and it’s hard to blame them for that. 

In the hope of perhaps running into the blond salesman again, or one of his contemporaries, she dips down alleyways and stops for a drink in no less than three vaguely sketchy-looking establishments without any success.

Shouldn’t it be  _ easier _ than this to dip her toes into a life of crime? Don’t idiots bumble into it all the time?

Where is it all hiding?

With the telltale pins-and-needles in her fingers and toes, it’s clear the illusion of  _ Hylja _ is soon to fade, and like a slightly higher-stakes version of a storybook princess, she has to get back to safety before her carriage turns into a melon. 

She is jolted out of an almost obsessive frustration about having wasted a day’s disguise components by getting hit in the face with a bird. 

Lacking the time to really analyze the situation, she scurries through the open door of the Stone & Key and up the steps to the attic room with a chaotic armful of black and white feathers that, given a half-second to breathe, she can identify right away. 

“Hue!?” Sigrin chokes. Her hands are rapidly losing their wrinkles as they set him down on the comforter. She’s closer to baby talk than she was with her own babies. “Hue, what happened to you--”

He submits to her examination, but he grumbles and squeaks all the way through it. 

His secondaries and tail are a mess of broken and missing feathers, whole swaths of median coverts are gone with horrible obviously-infected gashes where they once were, the upper mandible of his beak is broken, and his feet are so shredded and swollen there’s no way he would even have been able to land properly. No  _ wonder  _ he went tumbling right into her. 

How long was he out there, looking for her? Where was he looking? How did he _ find  _ her?

She wants to pet him, to comfort him, but can’t immediately find an undamaged place to touch that won’t cause him more pain. He doesn’t even try to rearrange himself, he’s barely responsive, every inhale a slow drag and every exhale a quick sigh. 

“I can’t believe...” she murmurs. His left alula is in good enough shape for her to stroke, so she does. “You did everything you could--”

He makes a low cry. 

Sigrin has heard of a few rare humans in history with the ability to talk to animals in a similar way as to people. Since she was a girl, she’s had familiars, and pets, mostly birds, but also feral cats and horses and the occasional mule or goat. No matter how close she’s gotten to them, or how hard she wished, she’s never been able to do it. Perhaps you have to be born that way.

If it was  _ ever _ going to happen, it would have happened with Hue and Mue, and it never did, and in this moment, there is a sense of having to permanently abandon that childhood dream. While they certainly had an  _ understanding,  _ and they always followed her commands, there was never anything magical or unusual involved, only her bird-keeping experience and their natural intelligence.

She kneels beside the bed and rests her head on the comforter near him. From one of the pockets in the layers of her skirts, she pulls a creased sketch of Soren. It’s a couple of years old, but that shouldn’t matter. Sigrin holds it up in front of Hue and tilts her head in a question, and he just makes a quick, unhappy click and trill. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she assures. That probably means he never made his delivery. And then she asks, “Who did this to you?”

Not expecting him to really understand the question, she takes a book from the stack she’s bought in the last few days and puts her fingers in three chapter-start illustrations: one depicting an elf, one depicting a man, the last depicting a dragon. 

She shows him each picture, back and forth, hoping he catches on.

He makes a hacking noise low in his throat when she shows the elf. 

The only thing she can assume is that he was intercepted trying to deliver her letter to Soren. It occurs to her now that if she’d been smarter, sneakier, she could probably have enchanted his white patches black, made him blend in with the other crows, but how could she have foreseen the need? Both Hue and Mue have run back and forth to Katolis for years, and she would _ never _ have imagined that someone there would ever try to harm one of her birds.

There’s a lot about the world as it is now that she could never have imagined, even so recently as that. 

Deep down, Sigrin once harbored this secret daydream. She imagined that one day, Soren and Claudia would be grown and on their own, and there would be a trustworthy young apprentice who Viren could rely on to take his place in Katolis. That the world would be safe, and  _ his _ mission would be over, and he might hike the mountain one last time and come to stay. That he would say he was sorry for how they were at the end, and if he said it, then she thinks she could say it too.

They’d have a few years, and their children would be happy, well-adjusted adults who’d come to visit whenever the roads were passable enough, maybe even with families of their own, and--

And no matter how unlikely it ever was, it seems even more out of the question now. 

Now, Viren is dead (and the circumstances, as she’s heard them, are still confusing) and Claudia is missing, and Soren speaks of his father with pained trepidation, while appearing to be allied with those who would see Sigrin herself dead or imprisoned. (She wasn’t sure at the time what  _ Deputy Minister of Justice _ meant, exactly. She knows, now.) And here  _ she  _ is, living in the shadows above a dirty pub, saying goodbye to yet another of her friends. First Nir, now Hue.

She has too many questions. Too many questions, and too little to hold onto.

If she had gone out yesterday, or the day before that, could Hue have found her sooner? Would there still have been time? If she’d stayed here today, or returned at the wrong moment, would he have failed to reach her entirely, and died alone? 

And  _ who,  _ she has to wonder, would know her bird at a glance in the sky,  _ and  _ want to keep him from his goal,  _ and  _ have an elf at their disposal? 

All of the questions are really only frustrated variations on:  _ Why did things happen this way? _

As it is, she doesn’t even have the right components left to do magic that would lighten his pain. She can only be there for him. He struggles toward her across the blanket, and so she lays him in her cross-legged lap on the floor, bathed in the little window’s fading copper light. 

Other humans have never much appreciated her singing voice, but her birds are another story, so she artless though it may be, she sings to him until he passes, a little after the stars come out. 

* * *

After hours of tossing and turning in the heat, Rayla finally begins to sense the beginnings of sleep overtaking her. 

At least, that is until beneath her lofted bed space, Lain ( _ call him dad,  _ Rayla keeps reminding herself) begins to splutter and wheeze.

Again.

Like a shot, she’s off the platform and past the curtain below the loft, shaking him by the shoulder until he startles his way into consciousness. Gasping, choking, and then finally breathing heavily, but normally.

“You--Rayla, I--” he peers at her through the darkness, looking around at where he is, like every time they do this. It always takes a moment, fear in his eyes, mouth gaping like a fish. 

“Yes,” Rayla hisses so as not to wake her mother. “Me, Rayla. You, da’. Remember? You’re home. You’re safe. No one’s got your breath, so, breathe.” It’s the fourth time in half as many nights, and as guilty as she feels about it, she can feel herself getting impatient with this routine. 

“Right,” he nods, trying to get his face back. “I was just--”

“I know,” she says, vaulting back into the loft. Under her breath, she mutters, “don’t have to explain.”

Moonshadow assassins are trained for a lot of contingencies, and most of them end the same way.

_ I am already dead,  _ Rayla was taught, from the first time she held a real blade.

She has learned that humans are made uncomfortable by this, but as far as she is concerned, death isn’t some evil to be feared or fought, but a possible end to every scenario. One does what one must, and if something goes wrong, death awaits.

The dead pass through a shimmering veil and join the spirits who visit the living once a year at the coldest full moon, and when the name of a fallen is forgotten, the last of their essence returns to the source. Simple as that.

It doesn’t sound so bad.

That is the nature of her education, her training. Everything is simple, everything is black and white. There is a solution to every problem, already prescribed.

When plan B is always “die,” though, it’s hard to be prepared for the kind of questions she faces now.

Every night, Rayla lays in the loft and sweats into the cotton of her mattress. The little house with the tree trunk growing through it feels like a sauna, the fire in the stove stoked so high that yesterday, someone knocked on the door to make sure nothing was wrong, there was so much white smoke climbing from the thin chimney into the branches above. 

Something  _ is  _ wrong, but it’s not the kind of thing she or her parents can explain to anyone: Lain and Tiadrin are freezing, all the time. The coins, they’ve explained, stretch out the last moment before imprisonment, and they were both held fast in solid ice at the time. 

That meant they felt that same sensation for all the months they spent locked away.

If she asked, she’s sure they’d self-sacrificially let her douse the fire, or at least let it burn lower, which is why she doesn’t ask. She only lies awake in sodden clothes, her hair sticking to her forehead, the air so damp she feels like there’s sweat in her lungs. 

Besides, if she’s awake, she can jolt her father from the clutches of his nightmares about having his breath stolen. Just like how during the day, she reminds them both to eat when they forget, and tells them the same bit of news two or three times before it sticks. 

Someone has to, after all.

The last time the three of them lived consistently together in this little home, she wasn’t even eight years old yet. She would stay with Ethari or Runaan, or they would stay with her, and she grew up comfortable with having them close, with moving around them and living in one another’s pockets. 

She is shocked to discover that she does not have that kind of relationship with her parents, that things didn’t just fall into place, and it makes the role-reversal all the more uncomfortable, caring for a couple of confused half-strangers with injuries nobody can see. 

After the freedom and purpose of having to return Zym to Xadia, this new “mission” feels vague and interminable, a cage that she can’t even complain about, given what both of  _ them  _ have just been through. She also can’t politely express that having grown up with mainly the  _ concept  _ of them, she bristles every time they remind her they are real. 

They breathe, they _snore,_ and they make absolutely _stupid_ jokes that she loves and hates at the same time, and (more irritatingly) there is an endless barrage of well-meaning-but-uncomfortable comments about Callum, like _he seems nice, pity it’d be so unlikely we’d ever have grandchildren._

If there were only an end date, a time when she’d know they were okay--

In the quiet just after dawn, she hears Ethari’s feet approach the door outside. Relief washes over her (he’ll keep an eye on them for a minute, she’ll get a break and some fresh air) but the moment he opens the door and she registers his expression, she knows that he hasn’t come for a social call.

“Sorry to wake you,” he tells them, Rayla still in the loft, Lain and Tiadrin awake but not properly out of bed yet. They both sit up, cross-legged among the blankets. 

“I think I need…” Ethari looks at the swirling pattern on the floor. “I don’t know. I think I have to go.”

“Go?” Lain frowns. “Where? Why?”

No,  _ no,  _ please, all Rayla wants is to not be left alone here, which just brings on a new wave of guilt that she isn’t more grateful that her family is safe. 

“Runaan went to the dragon in Katolis to get his binding off  _ weeks  _ ago. It shouldn’t take... no matter  _ what  _ the verdict was, he should be back.” He’s cutting himself off, almost babbling. Is he not sleeping either? “He wasn’t in good condition when he left. He didn’t seem like himself, and I don’t mean to be rude but after seeing the condition you’ve both been in--”

“You’re worried,” Rayla says. More quietly, she admits, despite herself, “I’m… worried too.”

“I know we’re a little out of it,” Lain points out, hopefully, “but Runaan’s always been the quickest of the four of us. I’m sure that’s still true. And besides, he wasn’t in as long as we were.”

Ethari nods. “I know he doesn’t want to see me, but--”

“So _ I’ll  _ go,” Tiadrin says, getting out of bed in earnest and already going for her things before she’s even out of her nightclothes. 

Three voices chorus,  _ “What?” _

“What?” Tiadrin repeats. “I haven’t got it as bad as you do, Lain, and Runaan’s… we may not have the same mum and dad but he’s no less my brother for it -- and he isn’t angry with  _ me,  _ is he? I’m sure he’s  _ fine,  _ but I’m also sure he won’t say no to seeing  _ me.” _

“I can’t do that.” Ethari swallows harshly, hands tight in fists. “I can’t  _ send you out  _ for a problem I made.”

“No, but I can go whether you tell me to or not, you big idiot,” Tiadrin says, going behind a silver-and-white screen to change. From the other side of it, halfway into her under-armor, she says, “and before you say anything, Lain, you’re stayin’ here.”

“I’m not!”

Dressed, she emerges from behind the screen to look pointedly at Ethari, and then back at Lain. She doesn’t need words to say:  _ and if you go, who’ll take care of him? You need one another.  _

“Well _ I’m  _ going, in any case,” Rayla volunteers. “Runaan might not be thrilled to see me either, but I know the way, and you don’t.”

She almost protests, Rayla can see it on her face, but then she agrees: “ _ That  _ kind of help I can use.”

“Rayla, wait,” Ethari begins, already starting to sweat from the heat of the stove, “I was out in the meadow, waiti--well, you know--and one of those banded crows brought a letter, from Callum. I thought you should see it. It’s a bit...”

“You--you read it!?” Rayla’s voice goes up a solid two octaves and she winces to hear herself squeak.

That gets the first laugh she’s seen from Ethari since Runaan left. “Sorry. I was curious what he was up to.”

She snatches it out of his offering hand. 

_ Everything is totally fine…  _ She skims quickly.  _ Couldn’t learn Earth magic, but that’s okay… Going home to Katolis… They’re escorting me there personally so you know I’ll be safe… No need to worry about me at all… I’ll be glad to see Ezran and- _

_ I really can’t wait to visit my friend Wren.  _

Oh.

* * *

Three weeks after Hue is laid to rest, the shaggy blond salesman (whose turns out to go by Ben) comes again to the Stone & Key, and Sigrin is more than ready for him. After a brief, tense negotiation and a promise to buy, she goes through his carpet bag, sifts out the chaff, and doesn’t find what she’s looking for. 

She makes a request that he bring her more of the materials she needs to become  _ Hylja _ .

To make sure her order comes back right, she offers to teach him a little: what to look for, where it should have been procured, questions to ask before buying, red flags to signal he shouldn’t buy at all, and normal, reasonable prices (or what used to be, anyway.)

It only takes him a moment to nurse his wounded pride before he accepts, bristling emotions ultimately taking a practical backseat to visions of the money that he could make if he has special knowledge of this new shadow industry he’s found himself in. 

“What happened to you, anyway?” He asks, eventually, glancing at the at-last-unbandaged scabs and colorful bruises that cover an alarming amount of Sigrin’s exposed skin.

“Dragon,” she says, but leaves it at that.

He winces sympathetically. “Ran into a couple of procurers who had  _ encounters  _ across the border, before everything changed. Nasty business. Least you’re alive, right? From what I understand that puts you in a pretty small club.”

The guy makes it sound a lot more heroic than it feels. 

Actually, it’s almost embarrassing -- there was no dramatic plume of flame or skewering with a sword-sized fang (these things were reserved for Queen Gunhild) -- rather she was  _ tossed  _ unceremoniously _ ,  _ ass-over-teakettle down into a ravine, at which point she must have resembled a corpse closely enough for the dragon to lose interest. Since then, she’s caught wind of the story about how Viren went out, and she can’t help but find it oddly funny (though that might be the lingering effect of the concussion.)  _ His-and-hers blunt force trauma, for when monogrammed napkins just won’t do.  _

Ben hasn’t been at it with components long, but contraband and black markets are nothing new to him, and he shares _ his _ areas of expertise with her as well: code words and phrases to see if a shop’s got something to sell that it doesn’t keep out front, secret places in the neighborhood where a person might make themselves scarce in a hurry, where to listen for rumors and gossip (and where not to) and ways to spot people who aren’t from around here. 

Out of her element as she is in her new status as a criminal, she appreciates the tips (and, like Ben, tries not to act as sour as she feels about needing them to begin with.)

It is the foundation of an odd, uneasy alliance.

Pretty soon, one or two of his suppliers pay her a visit, and so do their procurers (whose jobs have been made ironically less dangerous when they cross the border, but more dangerous when they come home.) The owner of the Stone & Key begins to pester her for a cut of her little consulting fee in exchange for the silence of herself and her single employee, but candidly, she reveals herself a friend. 

(“I’ll toast to  _ anyone  _ making life harder for those traitors in charge,” she grumbles one night. “I was ready for my son to die fighting Xadia, at least as ready as any mother can be, but I  _ never  _ thought it would be one of  _ Queen Aanya’s  _ arrows in his neck.”)

Rumors and whispers bring her displaced students and apprentices from Neolandia and Del Bar. They come looking for advice, safety in numbers, and a shoulder to cry on. That last has never really been Sigrin’s specialty, especially with strangers, but as summer turns to autumn and the circle widens, the new regulars serve that purpose for one another. 

And kids at that age, especially young scholars with so little left to lose... even in the best of times they’d only ever be a few drinks away from trying to overthrow the government.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is already the longest thing I've published and also the first thing I've published serially. I hit my head against this chapter for way too long before I figured out what it was missing to get it off the ground. It's been tough for all the creative people I know lately and and I'm no exception, but thinking about and working on this fic and the world it presents has been and continues to be my favorite escape, even if I have to squeeze blood from a stone occasionally to get actual words on the page. 
> 
> We have entered Book: Star. As usual, many thanks to anyone on this road with me, I continue to be delighted that y'all are having fun with this sandbox I'm playing in, and if there was something you enjoyed, please feel free to let me know, it is shameful how motivating that is (and yet I have no shame.)


	11. Book Five: Star | Chapter Two: Deep Field

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and to provide for it.”_   
>  **― Patrick Henry**

**Book Five: Star**

**Chapter 2: Deep Field**

Opeli’s words echo in Soren's head, soothing and accusing all at the same time. 

As impetuous and stupid as it was to blow off a meeting and a trial, she was sweet and understanding anyway, sitting on the edge of his bed with a hand on his shoulder, all gentle comfort.

_ “--had no idea it was so bad. I completely understand. You’ve been working hard, have you considered taking a few days for yourself, maybe get some fresh air? I find a little time in nature is a wonderful reset. I'm sure we can arrange--” _

The trust and kindness in her words is enough to make him forget, for a moment, what he has to do. 

Almost two whole months pass before he actually takes Opeli up on her offer -- not until the leaves have started to change in earnest and the equinox approaches. To Opeli, he says it’s because the scenery is better in the fall, and it’s a better time to go fishing. 

Soren’s been fishing maybe twice, and it was a long time ago. He faintly remembers liking it, but he has no idea what season to do it in. Fortunately, he’s pretty sure Opeli doesn’t know either.

The _ truth _ is that he's needed all that time to figure out how he’s going to do this. Sneaking around is not his specialty, and this entire operation is exactly the kind of thing he would once have left to others to plan (dad, maybe Claudia) and his job would be, as always, to just follow instructions.

Now, every step of it is his alone to figure out, plan, and carry out alone.

Opeli agrees so readily and cheerfully to his request that she adds an extra day onto his little outdoors vacation, tells him to double-check at the stables because she thinks his favorite horse is available, and then wishes him a happy and restorative trip.

“You’ve earned it, really,” she tells him, light as a spark.

Four days: that’s how long he has until anyone could possibly realize he’s gone. It feels like a lot now, but he knows better than to think he can waste it.

The guilt, knowing he’s going to let her down, is a cold, wet blanket over his shoulders as he sets out. 

It’s such a burden that when he finds himself alone at the crossroads (where the path to the campsite separates from his road) he very nearly cancels the whole thing and takes a fishing trip after all. He imagines it: turning left, heading down the path beneath the stretch of gold-and-red branches, setting up in the well-tamed woods around the Banther lodge, and trying to remember how to fish. Mostly, he imagines _not_ throwing away everything he’s worked for.

Maybe he’d catch some fish. Maybe he really would fe el better afterward. Maybe he could dig a little deeper into the developing groove of his life and not waste this whole opportunity.

_ Maybe _ he’d find a way to really help people with what he does -- and  _ maybe _ the fact that he’s sometimes uncomfortable with it is a sign he needs to stay, to pull things in a direction he can feel good about. Under Runaan’s direction, he can see things taking a turn. The agents seem harsher, the violations they want punished less predictable. 

Not that Soren’s really risked saying anything up to now, but if he’s gone, he can’t change that. 

He stares down that left path for several long minutes. Then, as if it has a mind of his own, his hand floats to his jacket pocket, and the bristles of Claudia’s hair brush scrape against his palm.

He turns right. 

* * *

Under the Storm Spire, Aaravos was fine. He could see the exit, and he was too delirious anyway from getting out of the cocoon to even really think about where he was. 

He was fine in Kannati, because he knew and loved it so well, and because even the smallest rooms and corridors always felt so civilized, not  _ catacomb _ -like at all. 

And on the river he is fine, until he isn’t.

They set out from a pier at the edge of a ghost town, a tiny village that had sprung up in the outskirts of Kannati, on the banks of the underground river. Despite all the residents being long gone, little light-balls burn, connected by long wires to the now-active power source in the palace. They hang from nets and stand on posts and are reflected in the glassy laminar flow.

_ This _ is fine. 

Eventually though, they reach the end of where the river has a bank at all. The walls narrow and the lights end, and the shallow chatter between Viren and Claudia that earlier formed the background of Aaravos’ thoughts is briefly choked in the total darkness of this flume to the sea. 

Their little canoe slips through the black water like a swallow down a throat, and there’s no going back. 

It isn’t the dark, or the earth above their head that bothers him. It’s the feel of the air, the change in the smell of it, that catacomb smell.  _ That’s  _ what’s got Aaravos’ teeth on edge.

They’re talking again. What is it about humans that they never stop babbling? A moment ago he wanted the reassurance of the talking, why does it bother him now? They don’t--didn’t even see that they were rabbits in a poisoned warren, they didn’t realize it was hopeless, it’s not as if they could talk away the--

Viren says something that Aaravos distantly recognizes as nonsense, and then, after a long beat, “Do you see? I told you he wasn’t paying any attention.”

Claudia snorts. “You win.”

Aaravos says, “Please. Claim that it was important. I could use the entertainment.”

But in the quiet that follows, everyone, Aaravos included, realizes that he’s breathing like he’s just surfaced from a long swim. 

There’s the  _ thup  _ of fingers on a palm, and Viren’s hand lights up. With the kind of faint impatience Aaravos can imagine him using on his children, he questions, “Are you ill? Because you should have said something if there was going to be a problem, we didn’t prepare--”

“No.” Aaravos doesn’t go any further than that, instead changing directions slightly. “We’re going to be down here in the dark for a while. You know my thoughts on long, dull travel.”

“Best undertaken with the distraction of a story, yes, I recall.”

He looks pointedly at Viren. “In a manner of speaking, you might say the time has come for me to repay a debt.”

“What does he mean?” Claudia checks.

“It’s  _ truly  _ not important,” Viren dismisses.

“Your father is too modest. He is a wonderful storyteller,” Aaravos smiles. “I was  _ rapt  _ when he told me how Avizandum met his end.”

Viren makes a noise under his breath. “Whatever the reason, if you’ve decided to be forthcoming instead of pointlessly cryptic, no one will argue.”

“Everything needs context. Every answer I would give would seem senseless on its own, but the context needs context and so on and so forth and it never seems the _time_ for sixteen hundred years of _context._ ” He hears the gravel in his own voice, the turbulence. He collects himself and, more softly, adds, “besides, this tale is rather _less_ triumphant, as you might imagine.”

“As you say,” Viren agrees, “if there were ever a time, this  _ would  _ be it. Claudia? You’re stuck in this boat as well, I suppose I should ask if you--”

_ “--Would be interested in sixteen-hundred-year-old history from someone who was there?”  _ Claudia interrupts at the speed of an auctioneer’s patter, voice a full octave higher than usual. Viren casts his light on her face, and her eyes are the size of saucers. “Um,  _ duh.” _

If he had known it would be that easy to win her over, he’d have tried this weeks ago. 

“Very well then,” Aaravos chuckles. “The first thing you must understand is this: No elf exists by accident. Each one is given life for a purpose, a  _ destiny,  _ by the will of the source to which they are connected, whether they are aware of this or not. 

_ “Most  _ sources provide a veneer of freedom. Their creations are born to mothers, they have families, societies, cultures. The _ Stars _ don’t bother with such frivolous things. My kind are not born. We are made, complete, equipped with the necessary knowledge of what the future holds, and the required skills to play our part as witnesses and record-keepers. 

“At least, that’s what is  _ meant  _ to happen.”

* * *

**1600 Years Before**

* * *

He doesn’t know all of that yet when he awakens in the desert atop a pale butte, a pillar-island surrounded by a sea of shifting black sand.

There are things that he knows innately -- who (Aaravos) and what (Startouch) and where (The Star Nexus, otherwise known as the Ash-Knife) 

He knows the layout of the stage of the world, at least the broad strokes, and he has a keen sense for the others like him who exist within it, their shapes standing out against the static of reality like little lights at distances too far to be seen by the eye. (There are three of them, all due to be recalled in less than a hundred years.)

King of the Dragons Pelagus Astrum (he knows that too) returns immediately to the nexus, her phantom astral projection catching up waveringly with the body at rest on the edge of the cliff. Aaravos’ genesis must have summoned her, because they investigate one another, her symmetrical constellations of eyes making contact with his two. 

She huffs through slits at the top of her chest and below her jaw (perhaps sniffing) and extends a slender, curious pedipalp. The fimbriae at the end of it ghost across his face and Aaravos closes his eyes, allowing something unseen to hook into place.

With that, they know one another.

The shape of the jaw and dark fangs make her mouth unsuitable for speech. Instead, words form in his mind, collecting meaning like dust captured into orbit.

_ “Strange.”  _ This is the first word spoken to Aaravos by the king of the dragons. It is the first word he ever hears in his life. _ “Through your eyes, the future seems unwritten.” _

“Should it be otherwise?”

Her front wings waver, held high and tense in the dry wind, while the rear set remains pressed tight against the snaking line of her body. 

_ “No matter. All things are as they should be. I welcome you to the service of the world.” _

King Pelagus Astrum does not waste a single breath on Aaravos’ missing pieces, the things he doesn’t know, or his future-blindness, and nor does she ever, for as long as she lives from that day forward, say another word about it that could be construed as negative.

The other Startouch, when he crosses their paths, are not so kind. After the king’s bland acceptance of what is apparently a severe flaw, their dismissal is an ice-water shock. 

When Aaravos complains to the king of this, she says only,  _ “They are as they were made.” _

This does nothing to soothe his anger, and with the king’s permission, he spends most of his first century of life in pursuit of magic that would erase this blemish from him, or at least color over it with a beautiful tattoo. 

He reaches the limits of his own arcanum, and the king sends him to Lux Aurea -- a neighbor to the Ash-Knife, in primal terms. She does not directly tell him to test himself in pursuit of a connection, but she does not directly tell him almost  _ anything,  _ and he is sure it is implied. 

The Sun is itself a star. Forming a connection is a stretch, but not an impossible leap.

His brethren do not love him more for his mastery, but he teaches them not to mock him, and when they are recalled (as was always their fate) it is at his own hands. 

Did they know he would kill them? 

Did they care?

Their blood is still on his hands when he wonders if their derision was even meaningful to begin with. Was it the product of real scorn, or were they just actors, reading out their lines in a script he can’t see?

He is around one hundred fifty years old when he is sent south, to the city by the lake at the foot of the mountains, to investigate an aura that seems to hover around the place they call Elarion. He stays for fifty years watching their white buildings spring from the ground as though the limestone and stucco was itself alive and rooted and throwing out spores. 

They grow roots and grains and delicious little fruits. 

They build a pass through the mountains to the ocean. 

They clash with the Tidebound guardians of the lake called Littlesea, who underestimate human ingenuity and spite to their own detriment, and despite what seems like greater power, the guardians are forced to give up a small patch of the lake. 

Aaravos is delighted by their persistence and creativity.

Truly, he tries his best to be the perfect Startouch, the observer and record keeper, always holding the world at a calculating distance. Even then, though, at that scale Elarion’s people are like cells in a superorganism, a hive learning like a child, and he can’t suppress his joy at each milestone, his worry when they stumble.

The differences between these people and himself are sometimes a gap too far to bridge, but much more often, they offer friendship freely and for seemingly no reason at all. 

How can he stay distant, when they invite him into their homes and lives at the slightest provocation?

How can his heart stay cold when he is folded into the sweaty, heaving bosom of a midsummer festival, in which monsoon rains beat carefully tuned drums and an old woman with creaking joints teaches him how to dance --getting soaked all the while-- to that chaotic music?

How can he ignore them when they cry for help he knows how to provide? 

Once, he sees a young girl crouched over an anthill, speaking softly to it. With sticky fingers, she pulls a piece from the plum in her hand and sets it by the entrance, watching with joy as the ants eagerly accept the offering and begin to work together to carry it home. Her mother returns from her errand and steps on the ant-covered fruit by accident, and the girl  _ wails  _ in distress.

He is there with them, and they are there with him. It isn’t a matter of getting involved or not getting involved, it’s only a matter of  _ admitting  _ that he is involved and deciding what to do about it. 

Without an innate primal source, they have no mission, and every day, they try to create one for themselves out of the nothing that they were given. Even at their worst, when they are using it to do terrible things, their creativity is a fascinatingly bottomless well.

Unlike his departed brethren, he does not know what will happen before it happens, nor for what purpose he was made. Every day that he stays in Elarion, this damage is reflected back at him, and Aaravos is faced with a choice: to be scornful, or to learn to enjoy, instead of hate, his own capacity for surprise. 

They also worship gods -- not sources of magic, but the products of them, a step removed. They worship nameless, faceless gods of the stones, and the grass, and the insects. They pray to the potatoes they pull from the soil, and the quails they pluck and butcher, and the branches they cut and whittle into tools.

“And when they do,” Aaravos tells the king, after his half-century of observation, “they seem to…”

_ “To what?”  _ Pelagus Astrum coils around Aaravos as he struggles to explain it. She isn’t usually this hurried. Is she anxious?

“To connect with the magic inside things, and exert their own will on it, direct it, just a little. They’re  _ changing  _ things. A few have come to form communicative links with lower creatures, enhancing this ability.  _ Mysta,  _ they call them.”

_ “So it is indeed magic that I sensed.” _

“Yes.”

_ “You  _ helped _ them.”  _ It isn’t quite an accusation, but it toes up to the line of one. 

“I merely expressed a few theories, ways to make use of this potential, a repayment of the kindness they showed to me. It was nothing they would not have discovered eventually on their own.”

_ “It is… concerning.”  _ Pelagus Astrum’s rear wings flutter against her scales.  _ “One branch of the path ahead brings consumption and destruction so ravenous that it turns the world to salt and ash. I feel a pull to stop it, to block this road permanently.” _

“I understand.”

_ “You have reservations. Speak truthfully.” _

Aaravos does his best. He compares humans to the araneastra spider, a thing no bigger than his palm, but which has a bite so venomous it can bring down a gryphon. It is timid, however, and only bites predators as a last resort, under the most dire of threats. 

The hum of the king’s contemplation stirs the dust on the surface of the nexus.

“They enjoy negotiation,” Aaravos says, “and they care greatly for social obligation. If you make yourself a distant ally, a... quiet friend... they would likely be open to discussion of restrictions. I would be happy to help with this, to be a friendly face. However, if you clutch at them too tightly--”

_ “They will bite.” _

“And with greater ferocity than you might expect, given their limitations.”

He is startled to have been asked for counsel in the first place, but deeply gratified that she accepts and makes use of it. When other dragons come to argue the point, the king quotes Aaravos, and stands her ground. 

She is challenged over this, repeatedly.  _ Os Magic,  _ as the dragons at first call it, seems to have many fearful enemies uninterested in cooperation. At first Aaravos scoffs at her opponents, but even she is not invincible. 

To better aid and defend her as her guard, he devotes himself further afield, step by step. His understanding of the Sun unveils its relationship with the Sky (hung within it, lighting it and leaving it dark.) Together, they are guiding signs on the path to understanding the Moon as well, and the Moon is a foothold to the Ocean, with which it is entangled. 

Earth is his greatest struggle, but he reaches it with the help of a friend.

He is like an acrobat swinging from rope to rope across a chasm. As long as he reaches for the right rope at the right time, he can move forward. There is a rhythm and an order to it. There is magic beyond what he is born with, if he is persistent enough to forge these connections.

It isn’t enough. 

Aaravos is four hundred years in the world when, backed by an ever-stronger movement to destroy Os Magic, Sol Regem finally succeeds in destroying Pelagus Astrum.

There are no questions, there is no negotiation, Aaravos is simply plucked from the Ash-Knife and taken to Lux Aurea like the inanimate spoils of some barbaric raid. Sol Regem tries to lock him in a golden chamber, “until some divination is required.”

Could he escape? Quite possibly, but where would be the satisfaction in that? 

Instead, he kills his guards and then stays where he is, sitting in the center of the empty floor. When new guards are sent, he cuts them down as well. He goes through _twelve_ before Sol Regem finally visits him for a conversation. 

“How can you be _so angry?_ ” Sol Regem wonders, teeth the size of men bared so close Aaravos could reach out and touch them. “You are of the Stars. You must have foreseen this.”

Really, Aaravos should boil with rage, or sublimate with embarrassment, or try to lie instead of letting himself be forced to admit what he really is, an _ impostor, _ but somehow all that sick inside him turns, instead, to amusement.

Sol Regem wants something, and he could torment Aaravos for a thousand years and he would still not get it.

It’s _wonderful._

It begins low in his throat, a spontaneous chuckle, as soft as a kitten. From there, though, it morphs, it  _ mutates,  _ into something dark and wild, into whoops and coughs of stupid, insulting laughter. 

Sol Regem takes a moment to catch on, to realize the truth, but when at last he does, the base of his throat begins to glow and shiver. 

_ “What good are you!?”  _ Sol Regem demands. “What did she  _ keep  _ you for? She behaved as though you were some great asset, but  _ why?  _ What purpose could a malformed thing  _ possibly  _ serve to a king?!”

“Perhaps you might have asked that  _ before  _ you absconded with me.”

“I am asking you  _ now! _ ” Sol Regem’s voice is loud enough to make Aaravos’ ears screech and ring after each utterance.

Truthfully, he himself isn’t entirely certain how to describe it. Not from self-deprecation -- he is more than aware of the value he brought to the arrangement -- but simply for a lack of vocabulary. There isn’t a word, precisely, for what he was. 

“Well,” he settles on, “I suppose I was a kind of guide, or advisor. I provided insight, particularly regarding human--”

_ “Humans!?  _ So it is  _ you  _ I should have killed!”

“Consider this a... coronation gift: A recommendation that you not underestimate them. I am willing to discuss the possibility of continuing as an advisor to _you,_ under certain conditions. They are not what you think.”

“I _ think  _ they are pathetic, shortsighted, purposeless agents of death, lesser even than the creatures they destroy for their own gains.”

Aaravos leans toward the great, golden snout. 

“Purposeless? Or  _ free?  _ Can you even conceive of what they have accomplished? I swear to you, if you act against them it will be your greatest regret. They were made  _ with  _ nothing,  _ for _ nothing, and when you strike them, they will retaliate as one with nothing to lose. They will beat themselves against you like the tide that turns even mountains to sand. Consider  _ that  _ my  _ divination. _ ”

He is practically spitting by the end of it.

“You would say anything to keep your station!” It is Sol Regem’s turn now to laugh. “Get out of my sight, odd thing, and be lucky I do not burn you where you stand. I have no need for a broken elf to guide me. I can see fine on my own.”

As the sun goes down on the day, Aaravos makes a promise.

He  _ will  _ be right, even if he has to load the dice of fortune himself.

* * *

**Present Day**

* * *

With a soft scrape _ ,  _ the boat thumps against something in the darkness. The collision is gentle, they were moving slowly and whatever they’ve struck has some give to it. 

“Hang on,” Claudia says, rummaging through her bag. 

“You don’t even know what the trouble is yet,” Viren scolds, and casts his light on the front of the canoe. 

“Whatever it is, it  _ smells--”  _ She looks up. “Oh.”

Only a little of the thing is visible at a time. The curve of a wet, hairy hindquarter, the fold of a long ear next to the woody protrusion of an antler, the shine off the vane of feathers lying on top of one another. 

In unison, they all take in each piece of the thing until the puzzle comes together.

“No way,” Claudia murmurs. “I didn’t think giant jackalopes were…  _ real.” _

“I admit, I assumed that they were either mythological or long extinct,” Viren says. “They may yet be -- this one seems…”

“Pretty dead,” Claudia finishes. “Yeah.”

She shines her light around the sides of it, highlighting the wet rocks it was sprawled across when it perished. There’s only a narrow passable space at the far right, and the head lolls into the current there, glassy eyes still open. 

The creature’s antlers bar the only gap large enough to guide the boat through. 

“Those will have to go, one way or another” Viren says the obvious. 

“Well, could be worse,” Claudia considers. “And hey, maybe giant jackalope antlers are useful for something?” 

Aaravos shifts to the front of the boat and leans out over the bow. He extends a hand, careful to maintain his balance.

He’s  _ compelled  _ to touch it.

In the beam of the magelight he buries his fingers in still-soft fur. 

Still  _ warm  _ fur. 

“It’s dead,” Aaravos says, “but… _ not _ for very long.”

Behind him, he can hear the wince in Claudia’s voice. “ _ Please  _ tell me it died of natural causes.”

Aaravos glances into the blackness behind and ahead, as though he’ll be able to detect the odds of the unspoken possibility that it was killed by something larger and more threatening, and whether it now threatens them as well. Of course, this is impossible.

He can’t see the future.

He says the words he’s so accustomed to: “I don’t know.” 

* * *

The thin waterfall clinging to the side of the cliff tells Soren he’s almost to the cave. He'll have to find the entrance on foot. By the edge of the stream, he loosens the Rusher's girth enough that he’ll know it’s time to rest.

Glancing back, the scene is almost art-worthy, the seal-colored horse against the yellow leaves.

Closing his eyes and imagining the way it looked before, he follows Claudia’s steps in his mind until he comes to it: the shrubbery and vines they’d broken through. 

Getting through the gap in the rock is easier now than before. At first he tells himself it’s because he’s clad only in light leather armor instead of plate. Even considering that, though, there’s no denying it. Between his dwindling appetite and the downtime he took recovering from his injuries, he’s just not where he was before, training-wise.

Automatically he starts making plans for when he gets back, thinking as he sidles through the rock about the changes he’ll make to his routine to ensure he eats enough. More butter on his potatoes, that kind of thing. He’ll have to ask--

_ No, wait.  _ His mind catches up with him and offers a helpful, if depressing, reminder that he has no idea when or if he’ll _be_ back, or whether he'll have any control over his own life if he does.

The wisp cave is more-or-less exactly as they’d left it, to the surprising extent that the trees inside it are still green, as though forgotten by autumn’s sweep across the land. It is full of glowing wisps, and Soren could probably put them in the jar and go, but he doesn’t.

Instead, he sets the open jar on the ground and takes a seat on a patch of moss by a low rock. 

It’s just nice here, and even if he’s got places to be, he’s still got to rest _ sometime _ , and now seems like as good a time as any: here, in the glow of creatures that don’t seem to even notice him.  On a whim, he tries to touch one. It feels like a cotton-ball, but it’s as hot as the outside of a cup of tea.

“For the record,” he says to the little lights, “I still think you’re weird.”

His statement doesn’t seem to bother them. 

Soren lays his head on the rock.. “ _ Everything’s  _ kind of weird, these days, when I think about it. I wish I could just… go back in time, you know? I know I’m not supposed to want that. But honestly, sometimes I wonder if it’s really worth it. I thought it was, when we won. I was  _ sure  _ it was. The way things were before, with the egg and everything, that  _ wasn’t _ right. But everything that’s going on now doesn’t seem right either. So either everything is still messed up, just differently, or _ I’m  _ too messed up to know when something’s right or wrong.

“And here I am, getting ready to take you guys up a mountain and do…  _ ugh.  _ Dark magic. Sorry about that, I guess. I hope it isn’t too bad for you. It isn’t, right? I mean, it’s not one of the goopy, squashy spells. And hey, you get to go somewhere different, see new things. And if Clauds  _ is _ in Xadia, you even get to go see your homeland. That’s pretty cool, right? Think of it like…” He stops to yawn. “Like an adventure.”

With the smell of wet stones and moss in his lungs, he drifts off to sleep. 

“Wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he mutters to himself as he dozes off. 

He dreams nonsensical things, and wakes up confused.

While he slept, the wisps must have gotten curious about the jar, because a dense cluster of them hover about contentedly inside of it, bouncing off one another. 

Not one to make life any harder than it has to be, Soren places the ventilated cork on the jar and makes his way outside, where the sun has only recently gone down. He can’t have been out for more than a few hours. 

Rusher looks up from the patch of clover he’s found to snack on and flicks his tail at Soren’s approach. 

“Ready to go?” 

With a couple of clucks and nudges from the stirrups, they set a pace up the mountain quick enough that Soren has to pay attention the whole way, watching for snakes and pits in the path and other hazards -- he can’t possibly ruminate on the last time he was here, or what he has to do when he gets to the top. 

By the time he reaches the summit he’s grateful for the nap he took, but he’s bracing in the saddle, shifting his weight from one sore, stiff muscle to another. There isn’t much he can do about his knees and ankles except dismount and walk it off.

The gravelly dirt at the peak still has clear footprints and marks from when he was here with Claudia. 

Good.

Soren’s not so dumb that he doesn’t expect Corvus to be sent out after him the _ second  _ they realize that he’s not coming back. If he manages to follow him all the way to Mount Kalik, he might doubt himself when he gets here, think he’s seeing the marks of an older trip. 

It’s already freezing up here -- it was chilly even in the late spring, but now the cold has a real bite to it that cuts right through everything he’s wearing.

Weighing them down with stones, he lines up the papers where he scrawled the notes: a combination of what he remembers and what he was able to figure out from following Claudia’s breadcrumbs. Oddly, the castle librarian was also a huge help (an idea he got from Narampu) and surprisingly willing to keep his reading material secret when he asked.

Not that it’ll probably be an issue. 

Given his reputation, he’s doubtful they’d even ask her.

His notes to himself helpfully remind him to unroll the map first, orienting it with a compass so he’ll be able to interpret whatever the wisps do. 

Claudia must have taken her little fire-pot with her, so he doesn’t have one of those, but he was able to sneak a mortar and pestle out of the kitchen, and that’ll have to do. Hopefully that part wasn’t important. 

As he pulls the wadded hair out of the brush (gross) he leaves about half behind, tangled knots and broken strands stretching like black-and-purple worms from between the bristles, understudies in the wings just in case the first try doesn’t work. 

Okay, so: Notes, mortar, map, flint, wisps, hair. That’s everything, right? He skims his notes one more time, just to make sure he hasn’t forgotten anything in the plan.

Step one.

A deep breath steadies his hands on the flint and he swallows, angling his back to block some of the wind and give the fire a better chance to catch.

_ Fuse your essence,  _ he reminds himself. That’s what he has to say, when it catches. He rehearses in his head, as if his mouth will otherwise suddenly stop working right when he needs it.  _ Fuse your essence. Fuseyouressence. _

Sparks catch the hair easier than he expects, and something strange happens. 

The wind curls into a spiral about him, and when he draws breath to speak, time itself seems to come with it, right into his lungs.

_ “Fuse your essence”  _ falls from his lips and the world goes bright, despite the dark of the sky. 

Despite having seen Claudia do it, he is still startled when the fire twines around his hands like an affectionate kitten. For a moment, he panics, sure he’ll be burned, but it isn’t even warm. 

Slowly, as though he’s made of explosives now, (and after re-checking his notes) he puts his palms on the jar of wisps. 

The air inside the jar  _ hums  _ with excitement. He isn’t sure how he knows it’s excitement, but in this moment, full with the charge of magic like a cloud about to strike lightning, he is absolutely certain. The wisps devour the light and the flame and rattle against the cork, reminding him of hunting dogs pulling on their leashes. 

He doesn’t know if it helps, but as he says, slowly and carefully,  _ “Seek the dark mage, Claudia”  _ he also thinks of her -- recent things -- because it feels like the thing to do:

Claudia, laughing at his ka-tallest joke. 

Claudia, abandoning her “secret mission” to save him. 

Claudia, aghast at what Soren was willing to do, illusion or not. 

When he opens the jar, the wisps pour forth, a broken dam of deep pink light, a shooting star going, going--

And he follows them, not with his body, but something in him goes with them, far beyond the most distant point his eyes could possibly see. They tear some piece from the base of his throat and drag it through the sky.

He blinks, and it’s over. 

A pen, he needs a pen, he knows exactly where to mark the map but while the streak in the sky will hold for a little while, this  _ knowledge _ will fade like a dream in moments, it’s already going, he can feel it slipping through his hands, he needs a _ pen _ but he doesn’t _ have  _ one so he dips his finger into the ashes in the mortar and scrapes them into a gray-black smudge across a spot far, far in the east.

The moment it’s done, so is he, crumpling into a barely controlled drop to his hands and knees, where he vomits into the snow just before consciousness is ripped out of his body like a loose thread from a sleeve.

* * *

Soren is six years old. He is meant to be practicing writing his letters, but his eyes keep slipping off the slate and over to the door. 

Dad says he is reading a book, but he hasn’t turned the page in a long time. There is something in the way he sits that can be  _ felt.  _ It is impossible to not pay attention to him, at least a little, to be  _ aware  _ of where he is when he is in a room. 

He glances over the top of his book. He doesn’t need to open his mouth to ask if Soren is working. In a hurry, Soren looks back down at the slate. 

Later that night, when Claudia shakes him awake, she has tears in her eyes but she is smiling, and Soren knows right away that it’s somehow about the magic. 

Looking down at her own arms and hands, she whispers loudly, “I have the chammels!”

Soren frowns at her. “Are you sleepwalking?”

“No! I have the chammels!” She clings to the edge of his bed and jumps up and down with excitement. “Mom said I would have a dream, and it might be a scary dream, but no matter what I _ can’t  _ run away or I might get sick. It was a  _ little _ scary but I  _ didn’t  _ run away. And now I get a whole part of my body! So I can do magic, and I won’t get sick or sleepy.”

“A new body part? Like a… third arm or something?” Soren glances at the sides of his little sister’s nightshirt, but only sees the normal two arms. 

“No, stupid! It’s inside. Like bones. You can’t see it. I have to go tell mom.”

“So, go.”

“But it’s dark!” Claudia whines.

It is dark, and getting darker. The walls go dark, and Claudia disappears, and then the bed and the floor are gone and he is falling. 

  
  


Soren is nine, and his father has been in his chambers for three days. The castle nannies are in charge for now, and they aren’t letting him or Claudia go in. The only people allowed in are King Harrow and the doctor. 

When Nanny Renna explains that dad  _ defended Katolis and Duren from famine, _ Soren nods solemnly. The moment she steps out of the parlor, he turns to Claudia, where she is draped over a chair by the window, a dark spot in a sunbeam.

“What’s a famine?” He asks. She’ll know. Even though she’s younger, she knows a lot more words than he does. “Is it a monster? Did dad fight a monster?”

“So- _ ren--”  _ She laughs at him. “It means when there’s not enough food. People get really hungry and die. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

“Not really. I only thought it was a monster because he got hurt fighting it.”

“That’s from the spell,  _ obviously. _ ”

“He does magic all the time and nothing like that happens.” Soren perches on the edge of the divan, unconvinced. 

“Yeah, and  _ you _ practice archery and sword-fighting all the time, but if you try something new or you train too long, it hurts, right?”

“I guess.” The older guys complain about that a lot more than the trainees his age. Soren wonders if he’s going to have that to contend with when he grows up, too.

“It’s like that.”

“Why? It’s not like you use your muscles.” 

Claudia pinches the book on her finger to hold her place and stands up, pacing like a teacher. “Mom told me it was like a river. The magic flows through the channels inside. And as long as you work up to stuff slowly, it just… changes the shape of the river, little by little, and that’s okay. But if you do a spell that’s really  _ huge, _ it’s sort of like the river flooding all of the sudden.”

“Oh.” He thinks of when the river by the castle has flooded, and how it all looked after -- muddy water, mangled banks, broken bridges, fallen trees. The last time it happened, the army had to do repairs for weeks and nobody could go swimming. “So… is dad gonna be okay?”

“Humans can heal a lot better than rocks and dirt can. I bet he’ll be fine.” For all the confidence in her words, there’s a shadow of worry on her voice.

One wall fades into darkness, and then the next. When he looks back, both Claudia and the chair are gone. The ceiling boils away, and when the floor vanishes, he is falling again.

  
  


Soren is thirteen and helping to welcome important visitors -- Duchess Enid and her daughter, Cara, who is about the same age as Claudia but acts much younger. Her staff does  _ everything  _ for her, and she carries around a cat dressed in a gown that matches hers, which Soren initially thought was a stuffed toy but turned out to be real.

He’s been tasked with entertaining her while King Harrow conferences with her mother, and he  _ really  _ hopes it’s just for convenience and not some matchmaking thing. The tour of the gardens is going terribly, what with Soren knowing approximately nothing about flowers. 

So he asks her a question instead.

“What’s with the cat?”

“You mean Lily?” Cara’s brown curls bounce when she tilts her head. 

The cat eyes the end of a shiny ringlet with tense interest, but ultimately decides not to mount an attack. 

“It’s just, I never thought you could dress up a cat and carry it around like that without getting your face scratched off.” Soren tries not to show his amusement when he imagines it.

“Oh, that.” She titters in a practiced way, and adjusts her hold on the cat so she can present Soren with an odd-looking paw. “We have a special veterinarian, who--see? No claws. We can’t let little Lily ruin the furniture, or go after mama’s canaries, can we? Who’s my harmless little girl?”

“Doesn’t it... hurt her?” He curls his own fingertips in toward his palms reflexively, imagining having his own fingers shortened.

“She’s just a _ cat, _ ” Cara scolds. “And she should count herself lucky. Town strays have a much harder life. Without claws, she can live in the manor, with me!”

Soren doubts that Lily was consulted.

On the next visit, a month later, there is a different cat, and Soren asks what happened to Lily. 

Duchess Enid answers, “Passed away, the poor thing. Ran outside and got into a fight with a fox. I don’t know why she would try to go. Wasn’t she happy with what she had?”

He manages to bite his tongue and not to say what he’s thinking, but it must show on his face, because later, in private, dad will laugh and say that he was  _ certain  _ Soren would say something foolish, but that he did well keeping quiet.

The new cat looks at him balefully as the room flutters away into darkness and he falls again.

  
  


Soren is himself, right now, coughing and gasping for breath after landing hard on his back in a vast void of darkness.

His vision is hazy and his head is spinning and he is in  _ pain.  _ Standing out from the crowd of pain, _ the star of the pain show, _ are his ribs. 

And rib pain is actually  _ everything  _ pain. 

It’s  _ take a breath  _ pain, it’s  _ reach for a glass of water  _ pain, it’s pain when he sits up straight and pain when he slouches and hot streaks of pain when he tries to put his shoes on and blunt pain like a driving finger jabbing the places where his armor rests.

Where is he?

The moment he starts to look around and realize that he’s not on the mountain anymore, nor is he in a memory (actually he doesn’t seem to be  _ anywhere) _ someone kicks him, starting a fresh cycle of coughing and wheezing.

This must be the battle part. That’s how this goes, right? This is the nightmare?

“Oh crap, sorry, I tripped. Are you okay?”

It takes all eight words to catch onto the fact that it’s his own voice speaking to him.

“Not really, why?” Soren asks, petulantly unwilling to fight the dizziness for some jerk with his own voice.

“I was looking for you. I didn’t think you’d be on the ground.”

“Looking for me?”

“Yeah, I got called into existence? I’m uhh--” Other-Soren pats his pockets until he finds what he’s looking for. He squints at the notecard and reads the words blandly. “The mani--fes--uh--manifestation? Of thoughts you um… suppress. Except, now you can’t ignore me.”

Soren rolls over onto his back and puts his knees up. There’s snow melting underneath him, dampening his hair and soaking his collar. He can get a better view now of the Other-Soren, streaked with gray veins, and wearing a black brocade cloak lined with what looks like green velvet. 

“Are you... wearing mom’s cloak?” Soren points out.

“I--no?”

“Yeah, you are. That’s definitely mom’s.” He sits up, wincing against the pain in his back and sides.

“You know, you did pretty good back there.” Other-Soren takes a seat next to him. “On the mountaintop, I mean.”

“Thanks, I think.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Well, my ribs hurt--”

“The mud should help that.”

Far away, Soren hears what sounds like a monastery. A lone voice, chanting low in the throat, and a bell, pealing hollow in a plodding rhythm. Around him, thin, hot mud rises churningly from the floor as if from a plugged drain in a storm. 

“Hey--hey what is this? What’s happening?” 

“Relax,” says Other-Soren. “It’s good for you. It’s got… minerals, or... something. Like the spa in that village by the caldera.”

The mud is up to his waist when stone columns and granite floors tumble into being, followed by a huge tub that smells like cedar -- to hold all the mud. There’s a ceiling above, but no walls -- just an uninterrupted view of a snow-blanketed mountain wood. Soft flakes fall outside. Just down the shallow slope, a bamboo pipe fountain sits by a pond, making an occasional  _ tock  _ sound as it fills with water and empties again.

“I thought this dream was supposed to be scary,” Soren says, feeling the vise around his ribs loosen. “Like I’d be… fighting something or whatever.”

“I mean, I guess we could do a whole  _ thing, _ if you want.” Other-Soren asks. “I could yell at you. Maybe wear someone else's face. Call you dumb. Tell you you can’t trust yourself. But c’mon, haven’t you had _ enough? _ I’m the thoughts you  _ suppress,  _ remember?”

Soren sighs. “I guess.”

“You... don’t like it.”

_ tock _

“I’m not trying to be a pain,” Soren hedges.

Other-Soren only nods. “You feel like you’re not earning it. Like you don’t  _ deserve _ it.”

“Yeah.”

“Well maybe  _ that’s  _ the challenge you have to face.”

“What?” Soren searches the face of Other-Soren, who is currently applying mud around his eyes and on his forehead. 

“You already  _ know _ you can slay a monster. And you’re used to getting yelled at and ordered around.” From somewhere outside the bath, he produces a cucumber and a knife, and begins to cut it into slices on the flat rim of the tub. “Treating yourself like a person, instead of a weapon for other people to swing around? That might be tougher, now that I think about it.”

Other-Soren lays his head back on the rim of the tub and places the slices like pale green coins on his eyes. 

“Hey, I’m going after Claudia, aren’t I?” Soren points out. 

“It’s a start.”

_ tock _

It isn't as if he often sees people getting what they _deserve_ anyway, and at this point, he's not so confident that he's the guy to say who deserves what.

“What more do you want? And what if I can’t do… what you said?” Soren reaches for the cut-up cucumber between them and, not really seeing the point of the eye thing, eats the slice instead.

His counterpart laughs. “It’s not an order. There’s no one to punish you for not listening to you but _ you. _ All I’m saying is, this path you’re on? Choices aren’t about to get simpler from here. Deep down you know that, or else I wouldn’t know it. Putting yourself in the  _ unqualified-to-have-opinions  _ box isn’t going to help you solve those problems.”

Off the ledge, down in the snow, a door appears. 

The snowflakes stop falling, frozen in midair. The bamboo pipe goes still.

Other-Soren says, “Door’s right there, when you’re ready. I’m not gonna tell you what to do, but personally? I think you should take a minute. Don’t run away.”

To the left of the tub, a chair appears, with a pile of fresh, fluffy towels folded neatly on top of Soren’s clothes. 

When he looks back, he’s alone with himself for real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can tell, I have specific ideas of what "king" and "queen" mean for dragons that don't quite map exactly onto what they mean for humans, as well as that Star dragons are ~different~.
> 
> If you'd like some fun homework, look up the other quote that Patrick Henry (the guy from the chapter summary) is famous for. 
> 
> The title of this chapter is a reference to looking at the farthest stars, the light coming from most deeply in the past. This chapter was the base layer of flashback, expect more --and more involved-- ones in the next two chapters also. I'm having a _grand_ time putting together the pieces we've been given and coloring on the cardboard backing where the puzzle is incomplete. 
> 
> I also went totally off the deep end coming up with ridiculous minutiae of ancient Elarion ideas. I mean like, thousands of words no one will ever probably see almost any of, cross-references with real-world river-valley civilizations, I maybe had a little too much fun. I figured I'd share a small piece of that with you though: [the Xadia map I annotated for myself to help with the historical bits](https://i.imgur.com/4pbj2lf.jpg)
> 
> (Just picture me wearng an _ask me about my Elarion headcanons_ T-shirt)


	12. Book Five: Star | Chapter Three: Mage & Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“World, do what you wish with him, but remember, he will always be mine.”_   
>  **― Cometan**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firstly: CONTENT WARNING -- While I don't feel this breaks the "T" rating at all, there are a few oblique references to sex, a little swearing, and most importantly, a section toward the end that is potentially upsetting or disturbing to a greater degree than previous chapters. If you are young, screening this for someone who is, or have especially severe claustrophobia, know that reader discretion is advised.
> 
> Anyone who was hoping for an extended flashback, congratulations!
> 
> Get comfortable, this is a long one. Don't forget about your cocoa. 
> 
> Stephen King fans may notice the reference in the chapter title. It's like that for a reason.

**Book Five: Star**

**Chapter 3: Mage & Glass**

* * *

**1015 Years Before The Present Day**

* * *

Kannati is behind, Elarion ahead. Aaravos hasn’t counted, but he is confident that it would be no exaggeration if he claimed to have made this trip at least five hundred times in the past two centuries. It doesn’t matter what state he’s in, he knows every inch of the ground between them. 

The main road from one city to the other forms a crescent shape, curving toward the desert before dipping back south again. Aaravos himself may have helped to tread it, but this time, he will not go that way. 

He has a different route in mind.

A wide river spills north out of the Littlesea, almost directly between one side and the other, but the land there drinks so greedily of it that a large swath of lakeside is a verdant wetland, impassable on horseback. So much outflow is lost this way that in most seasons, the tail end of the river (right about where the ground turns to black sand) is nothing but an alluvial fan, the mineral-laden ghost of a river-that-was.

It is possible -- even pleasant, during mild winters -- to pass through the sunny fen on foot, given a fortnight to spare, but almost no one does. 

Everything to the east of that river, all the way to the lake’s far edge and a bit beyond that, belongs to militant Tidebound who call themselves Guardians of the Littlesea, and whose northern border is ill-defined. Their territory (as they see it) seems to shift with the weather, and the season, and the tide, and yet, at the behest of Ocean dragons seldom seen inland, they defend the area around the nexus with vicious prejudice.

Given that there is no singular line that can be skirted to avoid this danger, the road and its travelers sensibly give the entire area a very wide berth.

As he approaches the north river, Aaravos steps off the path and into damp soil dotted with the kind of hardy flowers that can withstand a frost or two. A gust of wind sends the tall grass fluttering and swaying in silver waves. 

It’s perfect.

Fomenting anti-dragon sentiment among humans (and their Rootfolk friends) in a generalized sense is easy, in the way that making a rock fall to the ground is as easy as opening the fist that holds it. All Aaravos has to do is help humans advance their capacity to do dark magic, and tell the unvarnished truth. The dragons themselves do the rest more effectively than he ever could.

Goading people to _do_ anything about it is another matter entirely.

For as cruel and arrogant as Sol Regem is, he has, somewhat irritatingly, taken Aaravos’ furious advice in the worst possible way: rather than strike openly against Elarion, he has turned up the heat in the cauldron so slowly that the short-lived creatures hardly realize they’re approaching a boil. 

The natural “plan B” of incinerating the whole lot of them probably helps the poor volatile monster remain patient. Indeed, he’s been subtle enough that even Aaravos didn’t realize what was happening for almost a hundred years.

(More than a thousand years from now, he will tell this story to a mage and his young daughter. She will recall an experience when a dragon menaced a human town for three days, and the people _still_ did not fire on it until hotter heads prevailed. She will ask if it is an apt comparison and he will say yes, yes, it is _exactly_ like that, but instead of three days, the behavior is stretched across two hundred years. This is their strategy, this is what they are like.)

His waterskin is filled not with water at all, but with the strongest, cheapest clarh Kannati could sell him, and lots of it. He’s been sipping at it lightly up to now, but once he’s in the weeds and almost certainly over whatever invisible line the Guardians are protecting today, he takes a deep pull and winces as it burns its way down his throat.

There is a delicate needle to thread here, and no better way to do it than by being _obliterated_ drunk. This is his alibi for being here, his excuse that will render him innocently carelessness rather than deliberately provoking.

Checking that no one is looking, he pours a few drops into his hands and pats them around his mouth and neck, for the smell, and takes another drink, wandering toward the lake. Not _directly_ toward the lake, of course -- rather, a slightly meandering path that’s as much westerly as southerly, always within a sight-line of the road, and making frequent stops for further swigs from the waterskin and to pick particularly nice-looking wildflowers and tuck them behind his ear.

Is he being too subtle, with the smell? That’s a concern. It has to be completely obvious, the state he’s in, for this to work without muddying the waters of the tale he’s weaving. It has to be _undeniable._

He is in the midst of considering whether it is worthwhile or wasteful to spill some on his jacket when the Guardians emerge from wherever they are hiding, and are on him. 

The fight is short and cruel and physical. He has neither the time nor the coordination for magic. On his part, it is largely the work of muscle memory. 

It goes wrong -- that is, not as planned -- in several important respects.

He staggers back toward the path. By the time he reaches it he is stumbling, then crawling. Somewhere outside the bell jar of the alcohol are thoughts of how he can still use this, but the narrative is going to have to change a little bit, and the details are a problem for tomorrow-Aaravos.

The Aaravos of the present moment collapses in a puff of road dust.

* * *

Consciousness is a punishment.

Aaravos treats it exactly the way he treats all punishments: he avoids it to the best of his ability.

Each time he feels himself begin to float upward toward the surface of sleep’s dark ocean, he picks up on the first blooms of pain (first in his head, penetrating and vise-like all at once) and shies away. 

For some unknown span, he sinks again and again back into deeper sleep, as many times as his body will allow, until he can no longer evade waking. By the time he’s fully aware, it would be easier to catalogue the parts of him that _don’t_ hurt, though perversely, he’s relieved -- pain is far better than no sensation at all.

The room is small and low-ceilinged, with exposed rushes for the roof and primitive wattle-and-daub walls. In combination with the animal skins that form his blankets, the effect makes Aaravos feel as though he’s been sent hundreds of years back in time. While the mattress he’s laid out on is thin enough that he can feel the platform beneath it, it is the only modern thing he can pick out, stuffed as clearly it is with wool batting. 

Whoever lives here, they have allowed the march of time to leave behind everything _but_ the bed. He supposes he can admire their priorities.

This kind of practicality and lack of concern for fashions is possibly the signature of something very old. That’s a problem, because _Rootfolk_ wouldn’t be caught dead in a structure like this, and anyone neither human nor Rootfolk is almost certainly bad news for Aaravos.

Though, if that’s the case, why have they laid him out in a bed? They’ve even gone so far as to leave him a carafe on the table (though even the _table_ is little more than an overturned wooden box.)

Rather than soothe him, this incongruity makes the situation slip like marbles beneath him. 

Surely he won’t be alone long.

The wall, little more than a series of overlapping curtains, does nothing to block the low, idle humming of whoever lives here. He strains to detect a dialect or accent in the self-directed murmurs that interrupt it, but he can’t make out anything useful.

If he’s going to escape, he’ll either have to slip out through the covered window or overpower his… helper? Captor? It’s impossible to know. 

Fighting against the warnings and arguments from his muscles and skin, he pushes the covers aside and tries to stand.

This, like several things he has done since he hatched this plan, is a mistake. His legs flatly refuse to put forth even a decent effort at supporting him. He doesn’t only tumble to his knees but, in his doomed attempt to catch himself, clotheslines the pitcher and sends it clattering to the floor, where the water darkens the pressed earth.

The humming stops. 

He’s pushing himself off the floor and getting ready to trace a rune in the air when the hanging cloth that functions as a door is pushed aside.

“Why can’t I stand? What have you _done_ to me?” The words come out in a growl before his eyes adjust enough to see anything but a silhouette. 

Speaking makes him realize all at once that he’s nauseated, and despite his thirst, he’s glad he didn’t drink any of that water.

 _No horns. He has no horns._ And with another moment to feel for it, he confirms that there is no primal link. It’s a human, after all. 

Aaravos has heard of humans who turn away from their own kind, who pledge themselves to elf masters in the foolish belief that it will get them some kind of favorable treatment or safety or other reward. It seldom works out that way. He does his best to tell those stories, to discourage that sort of nonsense, but humans will be humans, and one of their biggest foibles is that the ones who listen tend to be the ones who already agreed in the first place.

“Let me help you,” says the man, reaching for him.

 _“Don’t touch me,”_ hisses Aaravos, and to his credit, the stranger stops in his tracks.

Some part of him knows, rationally, how ridiculous he sounds, but bleariness and confusion and pain together form a monster that feeds his fear with one hand and, with the other, strangles his good sense in a tight fist.

“You’d like to stay on the floor, then?” 

“Who _are_ you?” 

The man lets go of the curtain, which flutters closed. He first kneels, and then folds himself into a sitting pose on the floor, brown robes stretched across his knees, and Aaravos can better see him. 

“You don’t want to get up, that’s fine, I’m perfectly willing to sink to your level,” he jokes, a loose smile on his lips.

His face is a surrealist scrawl of dark magic, slowly fading geometries of gray on his skin, unusually symmetrical. He’s recently done something deeply taxing, and Aaravos doesn’t want to let himself guess what it had to be.

The first signs of crinkles give a hint of mischief to eyes the color of copper just starting to weather. His hair is long, and dark, tied back in a cable that spills over his shoulder when he leans forward. Interruptions of white meander through it.

He extends a magic-marked hand that looks like it’s spent a lot of time outdoors. 

“Ziard. And you: your reputation precedes you--Aaravos, right?” And then, in reply to the look of _yes, and?_ He adds, “I’m not going to pretend I know how much of what people say is real, but there’s no point pretending you’re not easy to recognize. You’re probably the most famous visitor this village has ever had. The locals probably have their ears pressed to the walls as we speak. They’ve got no one to gossip to but each other, but don’t think for a second that’ll stop them.”

Aaravos looks at the hand the way a wild animal looks at food that might be poisoned, and Ziard withdraws it. 

“Get to the point. Am I a prisoner or a guest?” He gestures to his weakened legs as the hoofbeats in his skull pound just a little harder. 

Ziard laughs at that, and it is a soft, golden sound, utterly without pretense. Despite everything, it loosens the coil of tension in the room.

With a good-natured sigh, he says, “We really haven’t gotten off on the right foot, have we? You were belligerent, to say the least. It was that or let you make your injuries worse,” Ziard says. “I don’t suppose you remember, but can you really blame me not wanting to be the man who let _The Great Archmage Aaravos_ die, especially like _that?_ We’re at Anguli Village.”

The name is vaguely familiar, but Aaravos can’t place it.

Ziard explains, “An occupied trading post on the west bank of the North river, near where it meets--”

“The Littlesea.”

“ _Out_ of danger. A hair to the west of _their_ land,” Ziard reassures.

“For the moment.” Aaravos leans on an elbow.

“For the moment,” he agrees. “And when they change the borders, we pick up and head down the road a little. Less bloodshed than fighting them over it, and if their handiwork with _you_ is any indication, clearly the right move.”

With the edge off the worst of his anxieties, Aaravos allows himself to be helped back onto the mattress, and the spell is removed from his legs.

Ziard is still leaning over the bed when Aaravos catches him with a soft hand to his cheek. He stretches his thumb across to the other side of the jaw to brush the corner of an angular, ash-colored stain. 

To Aaravos’ faint surprise, Ziard does not pull away. He simply goes still and allows it.

“That isn’t the only magic you’ve done lately,” he murmurs softly, focus darting from one of Ziard’s eyes to the other as he tries to get a feel for the shape of the spells that have passed through him.

“No, it isn’t,” Ziard agrees, unmoving. 

His eyes are steady, but his cheeks are pinking and his breath is held. Aaravos slips a tassel of Primal energy across the spaces for magic that Ziard has carved into himself, sounding them and finding their edges frayed and raw, already spacious but hewn wider still. And yet, there is a resilience, a flexibility.

Things may not have gone according to plan precisely, but this man’s potential may very well outweigh that setback, if Aaravos plays his cards right.

When the moment fades, though, there is a curious sense that it isn’t only Aaravos who held sway, that they release one another in equal measure.

If Ziard felt the examination, or has any thoughts on the matter, he doesn’t say them. Slowly, he stands up and returns to the business of caring for a guest: he opens the window-cloth halfway, lays down a rag over the spilled water, and refills the carafe, standing in full view when he sprinkles a greenish-gray powder into it, eyes flashing as he says an incantation that Aaravos knows like the back of his hand.

“I know you know what that is,” he says, pouring a glass of now-burgundy liquid and offering it. “By all accounts, you helped invent that spell.”

Aaravos drinks, and the crushing pain that goes all the way to the tips of his horns begins to recede, as does the queasiness.

“Thank you,” he admits, looking down at his legs where they emerge from the long gray nightshirt he’s been dressed in.

There had been blood on him, and a lot of it, some his, but mostly the Guardians’. He can remember that much: stains and spatters soaked into his clothes, auburn mud caked onto his wrecked knees, streaks drying tight on his face, and so, _so_ much blood on his hands, so much that he couldn’t see the stars on them. It was no sterile, magical conflict, no clever tricks played at a distance. 

This was close, it was _intimate._

Now there’s not a drop of red on him except for where it seeps through his bandages, and his original clothes are nowhere to be seen.

“Seems I’ve been bathed,” Aaravos says, letting himself smile at the implication, and at the way Ziard glances briefly away. It was likely a grisly business, but he can’t help subjecting Ziard to a weighted look and saying, “Tragic, to be unable to recall that.”

Ziard changes the topic artlessly. “Are you going to tell me what happened or will I remain in suspense?”

Aaravos never lies, not out of misplaced honor but out of pure practicality: keeping a six-hundred-year-old web untangled would surely be impossible. He will bend and stretch and veil truths as benefits him, but in this case, he holds back only his motivations. The events he tells in full, as much as he can recall.

If Ziard is to be offended by what he has done, or to regret his kindness, let it be now rather than later. 

“Good thing I found you,” says Ziard when the story is through. “Imagine if you’d died, or somehow returned to Elarion looking the way you did? The way they talk about you? Practically royalty. A thing like that... could start a war.”

They look at one another for a long, silent moment, and it is clear: Ziard is too quick, the things Aaravos left unspoken as bare and open as the points of light on his skin.

His host leaves him to rest -- of which he takes full advantage, drifting in and out of hazy dreams for the remainder of the day. At some point, he wakes up and finds a new chamber pot beneath the bed, and two clay mugs on the upturned box that serves as a nightstand, one containing water and the other containing still-steaming (likely by magic) bone broth.

He drinks both and sleeps again until dawn, interrupted only by the faint memory of being visited in the night. While he is only half-conscious he is almost certain that his host does something -- further healing magic, most likely -- before slipping away again.

Shortly after sunrise, he wakes to the sound of an _actual_ door. Feeling both restless and strong enough to explore, he discovers his own clothes, clean and dry and folded by the bed before emerging through the curtain.

The other room turns out to be the entire rest of the hut, and there isn’t much to it -- a little stove, a few boxes on crudely-made casters (one filled with books, another with loose paper, another still with jars of things) and a wooden bench, as well as a few shelves and cupboards along one wall. 

Aaravos is in the midst of wondering exactly how often the village is forced to relocate when Ziard returns, a divided bucket of fish and potatoes in one hand and a sunfruit in the other. There’s a half-smile on his face that says he’s more curious than angry.

“I’d have given you the tour, if you’d have asked.” 

Aaravos scoffs through his nose at the way he must look, rifling through books and belongings. 

“Why are you _here?_ ” Aaravos wonders, placing a journal back in its box slowly, shamelessly.

Ziard steps gingerly around him so that he can get on the floor to light the stove.

“Something tells me you’re not looking for a biology lecture,” He says, face hidden by the iron panel. “Did you really ask that question thinking it was answerable, or were you just enjoying the sound of your own voice?”

“I _saw_ your power. I _felt_ it,” Aaravos says, standing right behind him so that when Ziard stands up, they’re practically nose to nose -- this doesn’t have the intended effect, as he realizes that they’re very nearly the same height, and Ziard is just unusually tall for a human.

“Yes, I felt you feel it, _but did you feel me feel it?_ ” Ziard says, irreverently. 

The purple-gray marks haven’t faded at all, which confirms his suspicion about the previous night. 

“You _are_ peculiar,” Aaravos says.

“Would you believe you aren’t the first person to say that?”

“I would.”

“Then as long as we aren’t treading any new ground…” Ziard gestures for Aaravos to step aside. 

Aaravos finds himself obeying the directive. “I suppose I should ask you what favor you would ask of me?”

“You know, some might say you’re a bit odd yourself,” Ziard comments, peering at Aaravos before pulling a bottle of vinegar, a knife, and a wood slab from the cupboard. 

He cleans the fish by the stove, discarding the innards into a second bucket. 

“Don’t play coy. You saved my life, using dangerously complicated, draining magic, the likes of which is seldom seen outside the university or the royal court. By your own account you knew who I was.” Aaravos paces stiffly as he lays out the evidence before delivering his conclusion in a low rumble: _“You are no boorish marshland healer.”_

“Flattery will get you nowhere.” He chuckles down at the fish in front of him.

Ziard is being deliberately difficult, so Aaravos changes direction. He sits cross-legged on the wooden bench.

“I _owe_ you a favor, do I not?”

“We made no contract. I did what anyone would do,” he dismisses, wiping his knife on a rag before moving on to peeling potatoes. “And I’m glad you’re feeling well enough to do what sounds curiously like carrying on an argument with yourself.”

“Precisely. Two days, and my condition is this far improved -- what you’ve done, almost no one _could_ do, and yet here you are in a building hardly more than a temporary dwelling at a trading post, making fish stew. Surely there must be some way I can... repay you.”

This is how he starts it.

At least, this is how he imagines he will start it. 

He waits for a greedy glint in Ziard’s eye, a hint of a fantasy or a wish that Aaravos can fulfil in a way that ties them closer together. 

It doesn’t come. 

“Perhaps not money,” Aaravos suggests. “I could bring you any book you could ever want, I could bring you a library of them. I can tell you value knowledge.”

“And what would I do when we moved?” Ziard wonders. He says, “You know, I... _like_ fish stew. I make it a certain kind of way, with a little vinegar. Even if I were a rich man, I think I’d still prefer to make it myself. I’m not sure anyone else would get it quite right--”

“That isn’t the point--”

“Aaravos,” Ziard’s nimble, scarred hands stop moving, and so does Aaravos. “I understand those like you, always concerned about debt. I hope you allow me to be the final word when I say you _aren’t_ in mine, so you _must_ relax. Truly, I hope you don’t treat _everyone_ like markers on a balance sheet.”

Aaravos opens his mouth, and then closes it again. 

“The stew takes some time. Have some fruit. You haven’t eaten, anyway, and they’re good for breaking a fast.”

He eats the sunfruit and, in the silence left by their non-conversation, listens to the sounds outside. The walls are thin enough, and his ears can pick things out likely better than a human’s. The lake laps against the shore. Wind off the water whistles around the corner of the little house. Insects sing their love songs in the grass. 

Ziard is right. It _is_ a good way to break a fast. 

The stew is finished by what seems like mid-afternoon (though Aaravos has not seen a clock since he arrived) and the weather is nice, so Ziard suggests they eat outdoors. Around the side of the house, facing the lake, is a twin to the low bench inside. 

No sooner do they sit down with their bowls in their laps than do a few stray cats from the village arrive all at once, as though on some inscrutable schedule, to pester Ziard for the cast-off parts of his fish -- heads, tails, guts -- and he provides obligingly. 

They all eat together, Aaravos, Ziard, and the cats, and they all sit together in the cool, damp sunlight when the meal is finished, unhurried. 

Considering the cats, he begins to get a sense of his place in things. 

Debt or not, there’s no reason to be rude: Aaravos does the washing-up.

* * *

On the fifth night, Aaravos reaches a point where he can stand to look at alcohol again, and Ziard celebrates his recovery with a bottle of weak sparkling wine made from the petals of a yellow flower growing abundantly on the fen and nowhere else. It isn’t even _sold_ in Elarion, apparently being the exclusive knowledge of the residents of this odd place. 

As nice as it is outdoors and as squalid as it is inside, it’s no wonder that Ziard has these little satellite spots around the building -- a bench for eating and reading, a dark magic workspace protected from the elements by the eaves of the building, and this, a quaint fire-pit by the lakeshore. 

“You could make a killing,” Aaravos says of marketing the wine.

“Could we?” Ziard’s expression of bland surprise is exaggerated by the firelight. “It isn’t as special as all that, is it?”

“ _I’ve_ never heard of it before, and _that_ means something.”

“Well surely if it was so important, someone would done it already,” Ziard says. 

“I take issue with that statement.”

“Go ahead,” Ziard jokes, “take it, I have more issues than I need anyway.”

In the morning, they walk for what seems like an hour to a tiny clay pit -- Aaravos accompanying Ziard without any discussion, as though it was the natural thing to do -- chatting all the while. Aaravos tells stories of far-flung places, and Ziard explains that the clay in this area contains some mineral which inhibits the growth of mold, and that he has agreed to lend his talents to enhancing this effect through magic. 

“It extends food storage, and is key in hospitals,” Ziard says, “but there simply isn’t enough of it to go around. According to the potter, the nobles in Elarion are buying it all up for their own purposes, and it can’t reach the people who truly need it most. If it is made more potent, however, it can be mixed with ordinary clay and the price will--”

“How?” Aaravos interrupts. “I’m... not familiar with this spell.”

This the truth, but not the whole truth: he’s never even _thought_ about this spell, or anything like it. It is desperately unglamorous, the dark magic equivalent of sanitation labor, or leather-tanning, and it _should_ be sleep-inducingly dull, but Aaravos is utterly spellbound by the way Ziard speaks as though this were some heroic quest.

The moment it is explained, however, he sees precisely how it works, which troubles him. Ziard has developed the method himself, and it is effective but with seemingly little care for the impact on the caster.

“Are you... sufficiently recovered?” Aaravos tries to be delicate.

“Most likely.”

“Most--no, I can’t allow you to…” Aaravos huffs. “I can provide support.”

“How?” Ziard frowns. 

The procedure is simple. Aaravos can use his own primal connection with Earth to bolster Ziard as a vessel for the magic, and amplify the final effect of the spell so that the burden on Ziard is lightened.

“And this won’t hurt you?” Ziard says. 

“A bit,” Aaravos admits, and rather than explaining that he will essentially make a small piece of _himself_ into a component, he simply says, “well within what is tolerable, I believe.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“I know.”

In the end, they take twice as long to get home, having both been foolish with their limits. Ziard speaks as though he’s angry with Aaravos for downplaying the impact it would have on him, and Aaravos points out that Ziard overextended himself just as much. 

Through their bickering, they hold one another up, warm where their sides meet, and make what progress they can, and when they stop to rest under the full moon, Ziard thanks him for what they accomplished together, their own results notwithstanding. 

* * *

On the eleventh day, Aaravos emerges from the smaller room and into the larger one to find Ziard not yet awake -- he had wondered where he was sleeping, but been thwarted in every attempt to figure it out (it almost seems as if the man _doesn’t_ sleep) and now he has his answer: the wooden bench in the main room. 

He is still and tranquil, his face untroubled. Indeed, the marks of his efforts have begun to properly fade. If he is uncomfortable, it certainly doesn’t show. 

Aaravos watches Ziard sleep for a long moment before he slips out the door, bucket in hand, careful to close it silently behind him. 

The morning is windless, and the lake is glassy. Aaravos crouches next to where it covers the pebbles of the shore and draws a rune in the surface. 

_“Prospicis,”_ he murmurs, and he feels the energy shift in the water. He is cautious to stop the ripple of the spell before it gets too far -- the last thing he wants is the attention of the elves. His awareness flows over the creatures that have turned to face him, and he chooses among them and calls them: _“Veniunt!”_

He waits, crouching on the shore, as they come. Freshwater clams push their iridescent shells along the stones with long tongue-like feet. Dark striped crabs scuttle sideways to him, pincers raised as if in prayer. Deep-water lake eels beach themselves at his command. 

One by one, he picks them up, etching the same rune into the belly or chest of each creature, murmuring the same spell, _“Scivis,”_ and with it he comes to know their condition, so that any who have parasites or other dangers lurking inside them can be tossed back into the water. 

“You Ziard’s houseguest?” says a weathered voice from behind him. “Pretty useful trick. Don’ suppose you could teach it, though. Looking like elf magic.”

All at once, he is deeply conscious of his crouched posture, and the spots of lakewater on his clothes. 

Rising, he turns to face his interlocutor: a middle-aged man, squinting against the sunlight on the water, wearing a brown tunic whose original color is indistinguishable, and the kind of loose, knee-length trousers usually reserved for laborers and women.

“Indeed it is,” Aaravos confirms. “Though I see no reason it should not be possible to develop dark magic that could accomplish a similar goal.”

“Oh, aye,” says the man, noncommittally. He extends a hand, which Aaravos shakes. “‘S’nice. Name’s Miro. You know, rumor’s you’re a Startouch. Don’ suppose you could let me know how the rainy season’s g’wan to go? Almanac’s been iffy this year.”

“I’m afraid not.” This is his stock answer, which he delivers in a tone that suggests he is not _allowed_ rather than _incapable,_ and it nearly always serves him well. 

“Figured as much. No harm in askin’ though, heyna?” Miro nods in resignation. “Anyway, Ziard about?”

“He is…” Aaravos is hesitant to say the full truth that Ziard is still asleep, in case of any undesirable implication. “Unavailable, I believe.”

“Can you see he gets this?” The man indicates to the shallow crate in his hands. “Prob’ly for the best it goes through a third party. Can’t turn it down, that way.” 

Aaravos has the man wait while he unloads the clay pots from the crate so that he can place a few still-wriggling eels into it before he hands it back. 

“You’re sure?” Asks Miro, looking from the eels to Aaravos and back. “Almost never catch these things. Kind of a rare treat. Don’t want to take any away from--”

“I’m certain,” says Aaravos. 

“Thanks, mister.”

The second time he goes back inside, the little entry-way now cluttered with seafood and clay pots, Ziard is sitting up on the bench, rubbing his face. 

“Did I hear Miro outside?”

“He brought you some…” Aaravos lifts the lid of one of the pots. Inside is something dark amber in color. “I’m not sure.”

“Honey,” Ziard says, and they can both feel Aaravos hold back a joke, “or possibly mead. Probably mead. One of his hives was in trouble and I… nevermind.”

“So you’ll take payment from him but not from me?”

“He _asked_ for help. You didn’t.”

This is the first time they’ve spoken of it in a few days, most of which has been spent moving around one another with an odd, familiar grace, behaving like bodies in elliptical orbit reaching their perigee at mealtimes and random moments throughout the day. 

Aaravos has learned that he can get away with helping Ziard so long as he simply acts without offering first (a lesson it seems his neighbors have also learned.) When there is nothing else to do, he goes through the boxes of loose paper covered in slanted handwriting -- he makes no secret of it, and Ziard allows it without comment. He does answer _some_ of Aaravos’ many questions.

One of these is, “Where do you get the paper?”

The answer is tossed casually into the air: “Someone from the palace comes by every few months. I give them what I’ve worked on, they provide the paper and pens and ink.”

He doesn’t give any more information than that.

Each time they launch into conversation it is a high-dive without preliminaries, spanning everything _but_ small-talk, even things seemingly too personal for near-strangers. The only thing they don’t talk about is Aaravos’ desire to repay a debt Ziard insists doesn’t exist, and now too, their shared attention slides off the topic like water off an oiled boat.

Ziard is delighted by the eels and the bivalves, but, it turns out, allergic to the crab. It’s a pity, but Aaravos doesn’t mind, they’re _his_ favorite, and he’ll gladly trade his share of one thing for the other.

In fact, he doesn’t cook them at all: he likes them raw, dipped in a rare and expensive fermented sauce that he always carries with him for its ability to make nearly anything delicious.

This kind of thing is a rare indulgence. It’s labor intensive to prepare properly and requires magic to select the few safe specimens, not to mention that to most humans, it looks rather uncivilized. They prefer to cook the life out of things until they can’t even tell what they once were, and as he confides in Ziard, he can tell that his host is no exception, that he fully intends to boil this bounty. 

Aaravos stops him, though, and over a mug of the mead Miro brought, he mounts a defense of his preference. Ziard mentions the natural danger to humans in the raw eel’s blood, so Aaravos slices it for him, thin as parchment, so that he can see it is safely bloodless.

“Try it,” he insists, “and if you don’t like it, cook the rest any way you like. I won’t say a word.”

He holds the sliver between thumb and forefinger. A bead of that brown sauce threatens to fall from the leading edge. Seemingly without even thinking, Ziard allows Aaravos to place the morsel into his mouth directly, to prevent this disaster.

Aaravos doesn’t breathe. 

Ziard’s tongue is on his fingertips, but he feels it all the way up his arm, and he must do a terrible job of hiding it because the look they share could practically roast the eels by itself. 

“Aaravos, I--” Ziard murmurs, once he’s swallowed.

Aaravos practically upturns the little table leaning over it to press his mouth against Ziard’s in a searing, impulsive kiss that tastes like salt and honey, and that Ziard returns with a relieved hum. 

They get little else done that day, and at the end of it, neither of them sleep on the bench anymore.

* * *

**Present Day**

* * *

  
  


“You can elide _some_ details,” Viren says thinly, glancing to indicate the side of Claudia’s head before fixing Aaravos with a stringent look.

“Very well,” he allows.

Claudia, though, snickers knowingly in her throat and covers it with a fake cough, all of which Viren pretends not to hear at all.

Humans really _are_ hilarious.

* * *

**1015 Years Before The Present Day**

* * *

Aaravos finds himself doing calculations in his head -- not truly mathematical ones, but full of numbers nonetheless. 

He is six hundred years old, Elarion has been around since before he was born (it’s hard to draw a line between what humans were doing there before and the city itself) and there’s no telling how old Sol Regem is -- a thousand years at least. 

None of them are likely to perish entirely anytime soon, and as much as Sol Regem hungers to subjugate humans, and Aaravos wants to make him regret even considering it, neither of them are making progress very quickly. The plan had been to change that rather dramatically, but given the status quo, does it really matter if it happens right now?

Last he checked, most humans weren’t living past seventy or so. 

Aaravos could probably use magic to at least partially balance out the careless way Ziard treats himself, but if he has another forty years in him, it would be a shock. 

(It would sound cold, to a human, if he were to say this out loud, but Aaravos is not in the business of ignoring the truth for the sake of cultural niceties.)

Something in Ziard has awakened some matching thing in Aaravos, intangible and unnamed, that has slept for a hundred years or more, and that leaves him wondering if the only real goal he’s had for all that time couldn’t maybe wait, just a little. 

What if he just took a break, for a few short decades?

Not long at all. 

It’s hard not to laugh at himself. How recently was he thinking of ways to use Ziard like a rook in a chess game used to castle? And now, in what feels like the blink of an eye, he’s trying to make excuses in his head for doing completely the opposite. 

But no: he knows Empress Citlalli and her court far too well. They’re scared, and they _should_ be scared, but they’re also more bendable than a blade of grass. If he’s not there to _direct_ their fear and twist it into something useful, they’ll sell the farm to Sol Regem in exchange for a _crumb_ of safety for themselves in the blink of an eye.

Isolated in the palace complex as they are, he sometimes wonders if the rest of the city is even real to them -- or for that matter, if _Sol Regem_ is real to them. They’re so used to getting what they want, they don’t even realize what they’d be giving up if they knelt to a dragon, they can’t _imagine_ the way he sees humans. 

The dragons under Sol Regem’s rule are as likely to honor a deal with humans as a human would be to honor a deal with a rat -- less so, even, a thing those dragons have proven with every soft little boundary they’ve shoved until they crossed it. 

_A few short decades_ right now would be enough to lose ground he isn’t sure he can take back.

“I could swear there was steam coming out of your ears,” Ziard murmurs to him, and Aaravos feels the vibration through his chest when he speaks. “What are you ruminating about so early in the morning?”

“Why I couldn’t have met you a century ago.” It is, as always, not a lie. He is genuinely lamenting the timing. 

“Might have been difficult,” Ziard says through a chuckle. _Not existing, and all,_ doesn’t even need to be said.

He may as well get it over with. 

Aaravos disentangles as much as the narrow mattress allows and picks up Ziard’s hand with both of his own. 

“Come to Elarion with me.”

“I--” A pained look crosses his face. “I never did tell you why I live here.”

Can Ziard feel Aaravos’ heart stop? 

“I thought it was a… a hermitage, of sorts. You don’t seem like the type for the politics of Elarion academia, it only made sense you’d prefer…”

He trails off.

Ziard _led_ him into this assumption of course. He never _said_ it exactly, but he presented the image, and never denied it either, just letting Aaravos believe it all by himself. 

In a strange way, Aaravos feels badly beaten at his own game, but rather than being upsetting, it is startlingly attractive.

“I’m listening.”

“You joke about not having met me earlier, but I _am_ actually surprised that we never crossed paths. Then again, keeping to myself isn’t precisely new. And you’re not entirely _wrong._ I _am_ glad to be away from all that.” He looks up at the straw ceiling. 

“But?”

“Haven’t you noticed that it’s unusual here? The flowers? The clay? I would have imagined, with your Arcana, that you would have felt it. Or maybe you did, and you just didn’t know what it was. To be honest I don’t fully understand it myself. There’s something strange about the land here.”

Ziard goes on: “I can’t feel it. I’m only human. I had hoped _you_ could tell me. In any case, it is _different._ Dragons can’t smell anything here. They _know_ it’s here, but it’s as if it... scrambles their senses somehow. My theory is it’s an eddy in the flow of Primal energy, like a vortex that forms in water.”

Aaravos only looks at him, he doesn’t answer. _Did_ he feel it? Does he feel it now? Is it completely drowned out by the other feelings he’s had since he arrived? Is _whatever-it-is_ perhaps partially responsible for those feelings? 

He can’t trust himself enough to say for sure whether the hazy effervescence, the feeling as if the outside world exists only theoretically, is entirely his own, or if it is the effect of this _vortex._

Aaravos goes straight to the conclusion: “Are you... _hiding?”_

“It really is something that you didn’t know my name. I make no secret of it.”

“You’re hiding.”

“Banished, actually -- if… half-voluntarily, and really quite kindly. The focus of my research was precisely what I showed you at the clay pit,” he begins to gesture more broadly, “Efficiency, and amplification. I’m _not_ more powerful than anyone else in any way that can’t be replicated, it’s only that no one’s replicating it yet. One day I was called to meet with the founder of the institution, and there he was, sitting next to the empress herself, telling me that they wanted desperately for me to continue my work, but--”

“Not there.”

“Not there. Precisely. She was trying to negotiate with some representative of Sol Regem or another and apparently, to the dragons, my magic was…”

“Conspicuous?” Aaravos says, the word pulling his mouth into a smile. “All the more reason to join me.”

Too relaxed to filter, the words are not only in his head, they are out of his mouth before he even realizes what he’s saying. There’s no getting away from them once they’ve escaped, hanging in the room like a tangling vine. 

He has little choice but to elaborate, to make the case for what he intends to do and invite Ziard to be not a game-piece but a co-conspirator. Piece by piece, he assembles the puzzle over breakfast: the arguments he made to Pelagus Astrum, the dispute with Sol Regem, and the death-by-a-thousand-cuts slow-motion-massacre that Aaravos himself accidentally inspired with his own vitriol.

By the end of it, he is convinced that Ziard will hate him as a warmonger, no matter how well-presented his argument. He _knows_ that it’s a difficult pill for humans to swallow, particularly for a problem on this time-scale, not to simply push the hard choices into a future they’ll never see. 

They’re brilliant, when you back them into a corner, but it seems as though they have to _feel the corner against their backs_ in order to call upon those reserves, and just telling them that it is there is seldom sufficient. 

Ziard must have a strong imagination, because he sips his tea and says to himself, under his breath: “Set the trap off now.”

“What?” Aaravos is so startled that he laughs and argues against his own point. “You… how many times have you moved, just to avoid conflict with the nexus guardians--” 

“Yes, but--They move, we move, they move back, we move back, they aren’t trying to push us into smaller and smaller spaces. That fight _never has to happen at all,_ given a bit of flexibility and caution. But an _unavoidable_ conflict--I admit, when you told me what happened on the road, I didn’t think much of what seemed to be deliberate antagonism, but now, knowing the _context_ \--”

Ziard stands up and begins to pace slowly in the small space. It’s bizarre, to see him restless this way, like a bird whose wings had been routinely clipped long enough that he stopped even checking to see if he could fly, suddenly stretching and seeing that his flight feathers have grown back. 

“Empress Citlalli…” Ziard stops, freezes for a moment. “What she’s doing is pointless, isn’t it?”

“Completely,” Aaravos mourns. 

“You’ve told her?”

“Yes, but her motivations are… complicated.”

“Selfish, you mean,” Ziard says, and this cutting side of him, previously so well concealed, is also more alluring than it has any right to be. “So much makes sense that didn’t before.”

“Before, you said, _set the trap off--”_

“From a story, when I was child. In the final hour, the heroes were in a mechanical device that was slowly unraveling to the moment it would destroy them. In the end, the solution that saved them was not to _avoid_ the action of the machine, but to trigger it _too soon,_ at just the right moment, to ruin their enemy’s plan.”

Aaravos can hardly believe what he’s hearing.

“You said _all the more reason to join you,_ in Elarion,” Ziard says, “And you’re _right._ ”

“Good,” Aaravos says, a new plan, far more meticulous than he’d had before taking shape all at once in his mind. He smiles as he imagines it. “I greatly look forward to that, but… not _quite_ yet. There are preparations to be made.”

* * *

If he explains himself beforehand, Ziard will almost certainly try to discourage him, so he leaves for Kannati on his own without explaining why. 

He used to dream of creating a tool that he could press into the hands of a human to tip the scales, to _force_ Sol Regem and his ilk to sit up and take notice, to prove that Aaravos was indeed right all along. Not a year goes by that he doesn’t consider how _precious_ the look on Sol Regem’s face would be.

He’d imagined it would have to be something devastating, and until now, the necessary sacrifice has seemed too great, and the risk of such a powerful artifact falling into the wrong hands (dragon-loyal hands, stars forbid) somewhat sobering. 

An _amplifier_ though? Ziard has _inspired_ him. He could build something that performs just the way they did together at the clay pit, right down to the way he drew in part upon Aaravos’ essence and his own life force, but which obviates the need for Aaravos to be there in person. 

The wielder would still need preparation and components, and they would still need to _believe_ that what they do is worth the personal cost to themselves. It would have _infinite_ power, but with a cost that scales perfectly, a moderating influence that would remove the need for harsh protection and constant supervision.

And the icing on the cake is that anyone loyal to Sol Regem would find it nearly useless, unwilling as they are to touch dark magic under any circumstances

It’s _perfect._

All the calculations he did before reverse themselves, so that he’s thinking of how long Ziard might live, and how much time he’ll get to train successors in the use of--

He’s getting ahead of himself.

When he arrives in Kannati, ready to make his proposition to the craftselves in the mountain, it becomes clear that his _original_ plan is already working in his absence. 

Nothing in the world seems to travel quite as fast as gossip, and the story of his mysterious disappearance (and of the blood and bodies on the fen) has taken on a life of its own. By the time he arrives, it has mutated into the monstrous story of conniving Clearfolk brutally murdering the only Startouch in existence for no reason at all.

They thought him dead, so when he turns up at the gates, he is met with a pleasing mixture of shock and delight that only greases the wheels for his exacting request. 

To survive the fangs and fire of those who would destroy it, the staff must be made from istellrin, found only in the metallic cores of the stones that fall from the sky in the midnight desert once every twenty seven years. 

To properly direct the energy it collects and stores, the core must be precisely designed with a labyrinth of minute tubules. 

And to serve the function it is meant for, the center must house a crystal that traps a substantial piece of Aaravos’ very essence -- enough, in fact, that he later wonders what will become of him when he dies. Is there enough of him left for the stars to recognize?

As the only living creature with six Arcana, there was never any other option, so it is pointless to consider. He sleeps for ten days after the crystal is made, and it is ten more before he is strong enough to return to the fen. 

Ziard steps outside to greet him and tunes his attention instantly to the staff, sensing the truth the moment he lays his hand on it.

“What _is_ this?” He asks, but it is clearly written on his face that he already knows. 

“This is what you worked for,” Aaravos says. “The natural conclusion of your--”

“Aaravos, tell me you didn’t do this out of a sense that--”

“No.” Aaravos picks up Ziard’s free hand in both of his own. 

Ziard looks around the quiet cluster of huts and shacks.

“Arrive with me, bearing that staff, and they will have no choice but to let you do as you please. If there is any doubt, I will _give_ them no choice. Our plan _will_ advance.”

“I don’t know why,” Ziard comments, “but it feels as though I’m leaving here for good, that I won’t see this place again.”

Aaravos tilts his head, curiously.

All Ziard can say to elaborate is, “it feels like the end of something.” 

* * *

Everything falls apart in its own way. 

The cracks in this particular thing appear seemingly moments before it shatters, on a winter morning in the hours before dawn, when the frost draws patterns on the great glass panes of Aaravos’ palace suite (the windows themselves a gift from Kannati.) He stirs in his sleep when Ziard rises from the bed they have shared now for some years.

He knows that Ziard hasn’t been sleeping, and it isn’t particularly unusual for him to vanish in the wee hours. Aaravos gives him his privacy and it is never discussed.

Half awake, Aaravos doesn’t open his eyes, but he listens, to some extent. 

The metal legs of a chair scrape against the marble floor. 

A pen scritches across a paper resting on a glass desk, which then rustles as it is folded.

Footsteps shuffle, cloth whispers, and the latch bolt in the door clicks twice: once open, and once closed. 

Aaravos stretches out into the still-warm space left behind, and drifts off for another hour or two. 

When he wakes, he traces a rune below a half-full teapot to warm the contents. The space where Ziard’s thermos is kept is empty -- wherever he’s gone, he must have thought he would want some tea. 

The staff, likewise, is not in its stand.

Tension sneaks up Aaravos’ body. His mind cannot yet begin to string the pieces together to form a clear image, but instinct tells him to be wary of what he cannot yet see. 

He picks up the letter on the table as though it might catch fire at his touch, and unfolds it in a single-handed gesture.

> _Aaravos,_
> 
> _When you made the staff, when you put it in my hands, you gave me your own essence, and with it your trust. As you read this, please remember that you trusted me then, and trust me now. You said that it was the natural conclusion of my life’s work. You were only half-right. The other half is what I endeavor now to do._
> 
> _I have reason to believe I must end this now, that this is the moment we spoke of._
> 
> _If I told you, if I explained it, you would insist on coming with me, and I’m sorry, but I must go alone._
> 
> _In the event that I am wrong, I want you there, in the city, where you are safe, where you can keep them safe as well. Your knowledge and your power cannot be lost to history. No matter what happens to me, you must not be vanquished now. Elarion must survive, and they need you, maybe almost as much as I do._
> 
> _There was a sense of destiny in our meeting, and I feel that same sense as I write this now._
> 
> _In love and purpose,_
> 
> _Ziard_

  
  


If anyone were on the streets below, looking up at the curving windows, they would see a flash of light from inside. If anyone were walking in the corridor, they would hear the sound of a glass tabletop abruptly becoming powder. 

Hardly a blink seems to pass between that moment and when the mountaintop explodes in flame and Sol Regem crashes headfirst into the Littlesea.

There isn’t enough time. How is it he has lived for hundreds of years, and in the critical moment, _there is no time?_

Certainly, there is not time to wonder what Ziard was truly planning, what he knew or believed that he knew, what he _thought_ would happen. 

That will come later, much later, when he will have all the time in the world to do nothing _but_ wonder what he missed, what Ziard didn’t share with him, how long was scheming this, what reason he had to expect any other result, what lies he told or didn’t tell, how deep that mystery goes. 

In the future, in isolation, he will ask himself these questions and a million more, changing his position on the answers back and forth with every passing second, wondering if he was used, certain that he was and then that he wasn’t, and never truly making sense of what he did not know and now can never learn about this man who he loved so dearly.

Now, there is no time.

Empress Citlalli is wise enough to take Aaravos’ guidance not to assume that Sol Regem is dead, but afterward, too foolish to listen when he says that evacuating the city will only get her people burned as they flee. Shortly after, she changes her mind and follows his counsel, but reversing the order -- sending people down into catacombs instead of the mountains -- causes mass confusion.

Some people don’t get the first order. Others don’t get the second. Many are too young to know where the entrances and exits of the seldom-used passageways beneath the city even _are,_ and some of the doors that could once be counted on have been sealed for pest control, or used as storage, or flooded, or broken and never repaired. 

It is chaos. 

Aaravos saves as many as he can, lighting up the chambers with beacons that shine from the openings, and shielding clumped-together groups from harm as they descend into the winding tunnels below.

As the dragons arrive, marked by screeching and roaring from the sky above, he is forced to extinguish his lights and leave the humans in darkness. 

Even Aaravos does not know every twist and turn, and there is no way to know how many people made it underground. Some places are near to the surface, though. He finds himself in one such area, pressed together with a cluster of humans, bent beneath the close ceiling, urging them to be _quiet._ By the noise, there are still throngs in the streets above.

The ground and the walls and the ceiling all shake and rattle, loosing dust and stones upon them. Outside, sounding so much closer than he would ever have imagined, is the almost wind-like sound of raging fire and a wailing that will stay in Aaravos’ mind -- in his memories, in his dreams -- as long as he lives.

It seems to last forever, even to him, so he cannot imagine how long it must seem to the humans with whom he is trapped. He wants to soothe them, to put them under a spell, but he cannot risk them being groggy in a moment when they have to run, if such a moment were to arrive. 

All they can do is wait, and they wait so long that before the end, there is no more energy for terror, and gives way to a strange, sick _boredom._

The awful thunderclap of crumbling limestone buildings grows further and further apart, little by little, until a silence falls that is more ghastly still.

Murmurings travel through the random assortment of people in the chamber. 

They want to go out, to see, to assess the damage.

Aaravos, though, with his more-acute hearing, can still detect wingbeats in the air, and insists that they stay still. 

Groups in other parts of the catacombs that do not have his insight _must_ begin to emerge, because the sounds of conflagration and animal howling erupt anew above their heads. 

This pattern only has to happen two or three times before whoever is left belowground in the miles upon miles of other passages and chambers must realize that the danger has not passed, because it does not happen again.

Once the last leathery flap has passed beyond what Aaravos can hear, he risks a little magical light. What sight is revealed makes him instantly regret it.

The only exit of the little round room has completely collapsed beneath a wall of brick. At the bottom is what at first appears to be a piece of cloth, but on closer inspection is a clothed lump of flesh -- a knee, he realizes -- separated from whoever was beneath the crumbled arch when it fell. 

Desperation is a vine, winding around his throat.

He writes a rune into the stone and presses his palm against it, eyes shut, feeling out how far it goes. 

The entire corridor has fallen, and beyond it, many parts of the catacomb are either destroyed or incredibly fragile. Even if he could use earth magic to chip away at the blockage, there would be no stopping the knock-on effect from collapsing another section, possibly many.

He repeats the spell, this time against the roof above their heads, but it is likewise hanging by a thread. He _could_ save himself easily, but the rest would be crushed beneath the resulting rubble or trapped in an even smaller space to suffocate on top of one another.

There is no way out for them.

He does not need a natural power of divination to know that every last one of these humans is going to die, and soon: whether the seal is tight enough that the cause will be the air turning to poison, or whether dehydration will take them, not a single one will live a week from this moment.

Aaravos’ physiology is a little sturdier. He could likely make it three weeks, maybe four without water, though it’s hard to be sure if he wants to, if it’s only to die that way.

He can see it, projected onto the darkness: the fear, the anger, the despair.

There’s nothing for it. 

When he sits down, and they ask what he is doing, he tells them that he is meditating in search of a solution, and stupidly, they believe him. It _actually_ pacifies them.

What he is really doing is preparing the most challenging, least forgiving magic he has ever learned, a hybrid of Arcana likely accessible to no one else. He visualizes the rune -- almost impossibly complicated -- in order that he doesn’t make a mistake. He needs to find a little sliver of each source nearby. From down here, Sun is the most difficult, and Moon isn’t far behind it.

He isn’t sure how exactly he finds them, but he manages. (Soon he will understand _precisely_ how, and he will curse the single-minded focus he has now.)

“Forgive me,” he murmurs, though he does not know to whom, before euthanizing them all. They fall instantly, in synchrony, faces peaceful and free. In the future that is to come, he will repeatedly consider them lucky.

Exhausted, paying the price for this particular skill, he falls as though he is one of them, and he is unconscious long enough that when he wakes up, they have begun to smell. 

Alone in the chamber, there is no reason not to use what little energy he has in him to destroy the ceiling so that it crumbles into the chamber around them, burying the bodies beneath brick and soil and paving stones. 

Aaravos has never been born, but entirely spent and pulling himself out of the dark, he wonders if it is anything like this. 

Incredibly, there are far, _far_ more survivors than he could possibly have guessed, emerging from hidden spaces into the sunlight through the few still-patent tunnels and openings, directly into the clutches of an enormous regiment of Sunfire and Moonshadow soldiers, and the new ruler of the dragons herself: Luna Tenebris.

* * *

**Present Day**

* * *

“But that’s… _not_ when you were imprisoned?” Claudia’s pulled out one of the sandwiches they brought on their boat voyage and is frowning at it. 

“No. Luna Tenebris had a _different_ punishment in mind for _me._ I was to assist her troops in the relocation -- and make no mistake, that is the most _delicate_ way I can possibly phrase what we did -- because if I didn’t, if I resisted a _single_ order, she would simply kill them, every one of them, down to the last child.”

And he couldn’t. He couldn’t, not after Ziard--

“So you--”

“Yes.”

In the dim glow, Aaravos looks away from their faces at the walls of the underground river. Gray tendrils of fungus grow in number as their little canoe proceeds, and they stretch toward the magelight. He used to know what these were called, but he struggles to remember. 

Wasn’t it important? 

“From a last census of two hundred thousand, around twenty-five thousand survived the initial assault and were forced to march into the west, with less than fifteen thousand surviving the journey,” Viren recites mechanically, “that’s what the… the books say. That’s almost _all_ they say.”

“Yes.” Aaravos’ voice goes dark when he says, “Those _are_ the numbers that I wrote down for them.”

“Wait--” Claudia thinks out loud, “If she got you to do _that_ with _that_ threat, why didn’t she just… use that threat some more?”

Her thinking is precociously mercenary and Aaravos cannot help but admire that.

“Oh, she did. She told me she was being _generous,_ just as she had done with the humans. That I had three choices: work for her obediently, disappear from her sight, or be the reason that human beings went extinct.”

“I’m guessing you disappeared,” says Claudia.

“Eventually.”

“You thought you could create change from inside her retinue,” Viren guesses. “Or undermine her?”

“Wishful thinking,” Aaravos confirms.

“That doesn’t explain how you were imprisoned,” notes Viren. 

“Yes. Well. I didn’t learn my lesson, did I? I wonder, what do your _history books_ say about the founding of your country?” 

“That Queen Sama’s parents were killed in the mage wars, and she became a ward of the lord who was responsible. She made a trek into Xadia and retrieved _something_ that allowed her faction to end the worst of the fighting through sheer power, at which point she overthrew her adoptive father, decried his cruelty, and refused to speak of the artifact that brought her victory ever again. Historians assume she destroyed it, so that it couldn’t become the object of further conflict, or perhaps that it never existed and her journey was a myth all along.”

“She didn’t. It wasn’t.”

“And you know because--”

“I made it.” Aaravos looks around the river cavern as if he can see beyond the earth. “I may not be able to sense where it _is_ in my current state, but I would know if it were gone.”

“And you were imprisoned for making it?” Claudia asks. 

Instead of Claudia, Aaravos looks to Viren.

“It’s funny. I never _actually_ ended up telling you what happened to Queen Khessa’s grandmother.”

“You… killed her?” Viren assumes.

“It had never been _used_ on an elf,” Aaravos says. “I _believed_ it would kill her. Instead, it severed her link to the Sun and left her, in her eyes, no better than human. She fled in shame. I narrowly avoided capture, all _I_ know is that she must have taken a human lover, because Sama was undeniably her progeny.”

 _“Shit,”_ Claudia says, and then, at Viren’s scolding look in response, “Er, sorry, I just… it’s only... that means the whole royal _line_ is…”

They both regard Aaravos as if he has some further answers for them. 

“To answer your _original_ question,” he says, “I assume rumors must have spread somehow, and three hundred years ago, Sama came in search of the thing. She was spotted almost instantly, of course. You know how Avizandum was. Rather than kill her, they used her to find _me. He_ was so fixated on capturing _me_ that Sama was forgotten in the chaos.” 

He smirks fondly on the word _chaos._ Despite his loss, it was the kind of battle that could have inspired epic poetry, if only the sole witness hadn’t been focused on escaping with his key.

“I suppose that explains how she survived,” Viren says. 

“Dad?” Claudia asks, sniffing the half-eaten sandwich suspiciously. She offers it to him. “Does this… smell funny to you?”

Something wavering in her voice is cause for concern. Aaravos sniffs the air and, all of the sudden, he knows _precisely_ what happened to the giant jackalope. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to condense this into one chapter because I realized there was just so much present-day stuff I still wanted room for, but I may later write out a full fic of my orphan queen theory (as it has been incorporated here) at a later date. :D 
> 
> Random dialect note: Miro's accent and demeanor, in particular his "heyna?" is based on Scranton. 
> 
> The show gave us very little Ziard. I basically decided that he was a magical Norman Borlaug, who was a real [truly incredible person](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug) who [is not spoken about nearly enough](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug).


	13. Book Five: Star | Chapter Four: Celestial Navigation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”_   
>  **― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Content Warning** : This chapter includes detailed descriptions of cult-like behavior, directly inspired by real-world accounts of survivors. If you are a survivor of a cult or of the "troubled teen" industry (boot camps, "wilderness education," etc.) or any kind of conversion therapy, please exercise caution, this is likely to be triggering.
> 
> Apparently it's Dragon Prince Original Character Week, which I guess is an appropriate time to drop this chapter! This includes a bunch of catch-up about what has been happening for a couple of those. :-)

  
  
  


**Book Five: Star**

**Chapter 4: Celestial Navigation**

  
  


The communication networks of corvidae know very little and care even less about the borders of humans, elves, or dragons. 

Mue is aware from the stories of her sisters and their sisters beyond them that the red-glow river is feared and seldom-crossed by bottom-dwelling creatures, so when she was first given the order to bring the thin-bark to the green-eye girl with the beautiful voice, she limited her search to the familiar side of it.

At first, she did not believe the jackdaws when they claimed that her quarry traveled past the river in the company of the loud boy with the golden crest plumage and the mother-chosen mottle-face man, along with an enormous flock of their kind. 

Golden-crest, they tell her, returned to the near side of the river, but Green-eye and Mottle-face did not, and this is backed up by the Ringfoots who live indoors and, despite being rather boring conversationalists, are generally trustworthy enough on the comings and goings of humans.

The red-glow river poses little danger to Mue. In fact, while she has never before had reason to cross, she discovers she rather likes it. Taken at the right height and in the right weather, there is a place where its hot breath meets the cool sky and creates a wonderful pillar of lifting-air. She rides this nearly to the bottom edge of the lowest clouds and stretches out her wings to glide over the rolling floor below.

No matter where she looks, she sees no flock of humans, nor even any stray individuals. 

There is a sense of something in the air around her, a smell like the one before a storm, but comforting and invigorating all at once, rather than fearsome. 

Whatever it is, it is _everywhere._ With every breath she takes, it fills her and curls around the tips of her feathers and gives her the power to glide farther than ever before. It is _incredible,_ and when she finally does tire and search for a place to roost for the night, she finds that this same feeling is in the trees and the bushes and even the ground and rocks. 

Has mother ever been here? Why does mother not _live_ here? Perhaps this is the reason that Green-eye has not returned, that she has decided to make a nest here, where the air and the water and the earth are suffused with such richness.

The rooks and jays here speak differently too, in a dialect that Mue would find annoyingly haughty if they weren’t so endearing and friendly as well. 

Even when they bring the news of her brother’s passing (information moves quickly among her kind) they are gentle, and while their songs of death are a bit different from the ones she knows, they join her in her calls nevertheless.

She wants to go back, to see him, to mourn him in the proper way. Mother left her own nest, but if she knows regardless, she must be inconsolable. Still, Mue understands that if Hue was killed before he could bring the thinbark to Golden-crest, then Mue’s last mission may be even more critical. She _cannot_ fail.

Each day, she flies toward the sunrise, following the path of rumors of those who saw Green-eye. 

In one place, where everything glitters, she meets green-and-gold birds with six eyes and long tongues who praise the dragons in speech almost impossible to understand. They remind her of the Ringfoots in their loyalty and sense of duty, but if anything they are even more zealous and seem to get even less in return. They know little of Green-eye, but they become enraged when she mentions Mottle-face, claiming he did something terrible to the elves.

Once upon a time, Mue would not have cared one way or another about this, but she has been told that elves killed her brother, and if so, it seems possible that they did something to Mottle-face also.

On the top of a mountain, she meets a tiny dragon, a fledgling yet dependent on his mother. After her experience with the Sun-birds, Mue is careful not to claim her allegiance, phrasing her question as though she is merely curious. He recognizes her descriptions right away, but says that both of them frightened him badly, and he claims that _his_ mother says Mottle-face killed his father, and also perished at the foot of the mountain. 

As much as Mue's mother seems to dislike dragons, this one doesn’t seem so bad. There is no hate in the way he speaks, despite what he has seen at such a young age. They get along surprisingly well. 

Fortunately, it seems that Green-eye may not have been killed, and vanished, which gives Mue hope that she escaped and might still be found.

In the desert, she meets birds much older than she is, with indigo-sheen feathers like the clear night sky, and the ability to send their eyes beyond their bodies as they search for food or watch for danger. They are wonderfully helpful, using their skills to help Mue cover more ground. Mue stays with them in the green spot of the desert for quite some time.

At last, one of them has a lead: they claim to know not where Green-eye _is,_ but where she _will_ be, and it makes no sense to her that they can be so sure, but the thinbark is delicate and it is becoming worn now.

She’s getting desperate, and she’ll take what she can get. 

Together with a guide from among her new friends, she sets off for the place they indicated, hoping against hope that they’re right. 

* * *

Featherweight silver chains link together wrist cuffs and ankle cuffs, and loop around and between waists, so that the group has little choice but to form a slow-moving single-file line. 

The agents don’t seem to know right away what to do with Raum’s missing left arm, ultimately deciding to simply cuff his other wrist tightly to the waist chain and call it good enough, because “what’s he going to do with a stump?” Raum for his part, bites his tongue rather than correcting the misapprehension. 

When they move, the links clink high and soft, like bells, or wind-chimes. There’s something obscene and incongruous about it.

“Let us take it nice and easy,” says the slightly-built Sunfire elf called Vif. 

Her hair is a waterfall of tiny golden braids all tied together at the back. The little metal cylinders that hold them in place clink together when she moves her head, stresses on the syllables of her movement. Her accent is thick enough that there’s potential for misunderstanding, and Raum wonders if she ever left Lux Aurea before all this. 

“ _T_ _he Depot_ is not far, and there is no hurry,” she says, sounding boredly rehearsed. “You will walk smoothly and calmly. Keep your eyes straight ahead. Do not speak to other humans. Do not speak at all unless spoken to.”

“To be honest,” she adds, tone loosening as she goes off-script, “ _I_ care little what you do, but after the depot, the remainder of your travel will be in the hands of someone quite different, so I suggest you begin to practice the rules _now,_ in order that your future at _Doctrina Limen_ should have an auspicious beginning.”

It isn’t surprising that no one speaks up. 

Even Raum has a vague sense of disbelief at the whole thing, it’s dreamlike, too strange to be real. At any moment, someone will come out of the bushes and say _just kidding, you’re free to go,_ and Raum will be home in his bed by nightfall. Some stupid part of him is sure of it.

It must be the same for the others: too confused to know what to say, too frightened to be the first to move, and too hopeful that good behavior will earn them some privilege at their destination, wherever it may be. 

_The Depot_ turns out to be little more than a large clearing in the woods not far from what used to be the royal family’s winter vacation home -- now, when he glimpses it through the trees as they pass close, it is overrun with elves, all wearing their own attire but overtop it, identical epaulets, belts and bracers with symbols he is not close enough to see clearly.

Vif says nothing despite Raum craning his head, if she even notices. She told the truth about not caring, then.

Raum has made deliveries there, that’s all. Still, he feels a strange flip of indignation when he sees them making themselves at home.

In the clearing itself, two other groups a bit larger and more diverse than Raum’s are already waiting. Nearly identical Moonshadow elves stand as still as statues in a circle around the edges of the trees.

The other two groups form loose threads, all sitting on the ground in whatever positions are comfortable in chains -- most of them with their knees pulled up. 

His group winds up in a similar posture, arranged in the damp grass, and Raum passes the time by practicing with his peripheral vision. The man next in the strand is middle-aged and paunchy, dressed in what looks like nightclothes. Did they pull him out of his bed when they arrested him?

To his other side is a woman, but he has no idea about her age, with the dark curtain of hair in the way of her face. A powder blue dress exposes enough skin to tell she is thin in a sickly, angular kind of way.

While they wait, another group is delivered, which raises the question of how long the other two have waited under the eyes of the guards.

Dusk has nearly finished pulling a cloak of darkness around the clearing when a soft rustle gets everyone’s attention. 

“Eyes on me,” says the stranger rhythmically. 

She does not need to speak loudly, her voice is like a hand on Raum’s throat that could caress or strangle.

Her complexion is dark, setting off the brilliant white of her layered robes and silver jewelry to the point that they glow. She draws a little blue-white rod the size of a matchstick from a pocket in her sleeve, and snaps it in half.

The guards disappear.

So do the chains, all of them except for the single wrist-cuff that turns into a nothing more than a teal ribbon band. The rest melts into the growing ground-fog as if it was made of mist all along, and in a way, it was.

Furious understanding wells up in Raum, twists around his shoulders, and compels him to do _something._ He wonders if Vif, who left them hours ago, was aware that the chains were an illusion, or if she was fooled as well.

Despite the warnings, everyone’s looking around, muttering to themselves, to one another.

“Silence,” says the elf, and there is a sensation in Raum’s wrist (beneath the ribbon) like he’s been stabbed with a sewing needle. When he inches the ribbon up his skin with his stump, there’s no damage beneath.

She doesn’t give them her name as she arranges them into a _new_ single-file line from one end of the clearing to the other. They are completely unfettered when she orders them to walk like ducklings behind a shimmering illusion of an elf at the front.

They were never chained start with, he has to remind himself.

Raum seriously thinks about running, but while he’s thinking, someone up ahead is _acting,_ breaking from the formation and darting into the trees. The phantom up front holds up a hand, and they don’t have to wait more than a few minutes before a scream comes back to them, and then a whimper. He’s still very near.

He emerges back into the clearing, his gait loose and his eyes glassy.

The illusionist approaches him and picks up his right hand, stroking the red ribbon.

“How long were you gone?” She asks him. 

“I don’t… know,” he says, touching his chin, openly surprised to find it as clean-shaven as it was minutes ago. “It was… how are you still here? How is everyone--”

“Tell me, how long do you _believe_ you were gone? If you had to guess?”

“W- _weeks_.” He is larger than she is in every way. If he got one punch off she’d go down like a sack of flour, but his voice is a whisper and he looks at her like a child looks at a stern headmistress. “Just… lost… went in circles, and…”

“Do you want to get in line and behave? Or do you want to go back into the woods awhile longer?”

He answers by retaking his place in jerky steps, a marionette in the hands of an amateur puppeteer.

They walk through the night, a parade of near-strangers led by a ghost.

It's easy to imagine fleeing like that man did, and some are foolish enough to try. Each runner must think they have a plan, think they’re faster or smarter than the last, think they’ve got the right moment.

Raum knows, because he comes very close to thinking that himself on several occasions. 

He only watches. Not _all_ of them suffer the same fate -- _some_ are scooped up by unseen soldiers in the woods instead and returned by force. A few try more than once, reminding Raum of a beetle held in the palm of a child, placing one hand in front of the other again and again so that the insect inches ever onward but gets nowhere for its trouble. 

Since he is meant to keep his eyes forward, he busies himself with what is ahead: the same woman as before, her arms breaking out in gooseflesh as the coolest part of the night approaches. Perhaps she had a jacket before, but they were long ago forced to surrender any clothing with pockets or pouches.

Eyes front, one foot in front of the other.

The thin woman’s energy depletes quickly, and she can’t keep up the pace. He keeps stepping on her heels. Badly as he wants to apologize, it isn’t safe to speak. Hopefully she understands.

Thick trunks slowly blend into pin-like young alders and birches, until that’s all that surrounds them, and then even that in turn becomes prairie and scrub. Beneath a knife-moon they walk, and they walk, and they walk, until Raum’s ankles burn, and his feet swell in his shoes.

They are given a brief rest, a fitful time of uncertain length, lined up on the ground like bodies recovered from a battlefield, taken one by one to trees that serve as toilets. Uncomfortable as it is, most of them _do_ doze off at least briefly. Sustenance comes in the form of moonberry juice, which is sweet and delicious and comes with a promise that it has everything they need in just the swallow or two they are given. There is still a gnawing in his stomach.

At some point, two human soldiers arrive to assist the illusionist -- a woman and a man, who he hears the elf call Cin and Mevian respectively. They walk alongside the line, pointing at people in it and whispering to one another. The knee-jerk feeling is that if they are human, they must be real, but Raum is having trouble convincing himself.

In the time before dawn, he goes somewhere in his mind. It is the same place he went when the barber surgeon amputated his left forearm, a place inside a bell jar, where pain and fear can hammer away, but cannot reach him. His feet pick themselves up and put themselves down without any particular input from him. Only when they nearly reach their destination does he emerge back into his own body.

Spanning the border is a bridge of sorts, a single unadorned plank of stone, as if a basalt obelisk just so happened to fall across the gap. Here, it is a canyon, uncomfortably hot to cross despite the height, with plumes of steam and ash belching from below. Some of them are afraid and hesitant, most are too tired to care. 

Eight single-story buildings squat unpleasantly just inside Xadia, shaped like stretched-out barns, and there is a ninth, a middle one much larger than the rest -- two stories, and a lot wider. A pallid sun rises hesitantly behind them.

Cin and Mevian line them up outside the center building, and the mysterious illusionist snaps another little matchstick in her hands.

About half of their number melt into mist.

Never there to start with! 

Never there at all! 

Raum wants to laugh. The noise roils in his chest and slams against his throat but he chokes it back. He is certainly awake _now_ , his mind churning overtime to remember the features of the people who’d tried to run and been made into temporarily-drooling cautionary tales. Were _they_ real, or just a show to discourage disobedience? 

Everyone else is looking around too, despite orders to keep their eyes front. They can’t help it, and Cin shouts over the crowd. 

“That’s a link for every last one of you!”

“You haven’t even told them what that means yet,” says Mevian

Raum can guess it isn’t good.

There is more moonberry juice, which suits his parched tongue fine. His stomach still growls, but he knows he won’t starve, and it gives him a little of himself back, enough to listen to the speech.

Cin and Mevian explain in turn about “orders,” which sound like a kind of rank.

The orders begin from zero -- the lowest -- but show you’re becoming the right sort, and you rise. You gain authority, responsibility. (Of course, you can lose it, too.) At ten, you go home. 

These two are apparently the highest residents at present, both sevens. 

If they can do it, they say, anybody can do it. It’s simple.

Raum still hasn’t made up his mind whether they’re real or not, but he gets the message: just play along. Just play the game. 

Simple.

 _Actual_ dark mages (or anyone who’s ever done even a single spell, as determined by the sniff of a young dragon) and the noisiest dissidents begin at zero. Most everyone else begins at one, Raum included. A borderline case can begin at two. So: this is the sorting system they are not told when they appear for their trials. 

Each of them is called into categories. He’d somehow pictured numbers or codes, but there is none of that, they keep their names, at least.

The nightclothes-man (named Edden) is a zero, and the gaunt woman was apparently an illusion all along. The singular two is a boy whose name Raum doesn’t catch who looks like he can’t possibly be over twelve.

A human comes out to collect him, while Cin leads away the zeroes, and Mevian brings Raum’s group of ones into their bunkhouse. It is spare and badly lacking in privacy, two long rows of bunk beds running down the length of the structure, but altogether not quite as grim as Raum’s worst imaginings on the walk here. 

It isn’t a prison, or at least it isn’t the kind of prison he pictured.

“You’re still on probation so you’ll just be shadowing the _real_ order-ones for the time being. Lower orders’ behavior will reflect on you, so do what you have to to keep them in line. Whatever it takes. You’ll see. Trust me, your higher orders only care about results. And if your order-zeroes act out or try to escape, it’s on your head too.”

He makes a gesture that indicates sinking or dropping to a lower order.

“There’s a letter on your beds with the details.”

They’re given a moment to skim them. 

_“Links” are the pieces of the chains of your shame that you forge yourself._ Raum’s eyes skip to this section, remembering what Cin said. _They are given for actions that demonstrate unsuitability and potential for order-lowering._

Mevian interrupts: “Now we’ll do the tour, you’ll get some rest, and then in the morning get those heads shaved.”

Raum’s heart drops into his stomach.

* * *

“What is this?” 

Niu is the order-three mentor assigned to Raum, a slim man only a year older, but with a smooth face that makes him look younger, and straight black hair long enough to indicate that his order level allows him to grow it. 

He’s almost certainly real, though Raum has seen enough otherwise-convincing things appear and disappear in the last couple of days that he can’t depend on anything. 

As he cuts away at Raum’s curls he explains things like, “You have to hand out at least twenty-five links a day, or you’ll get linked for not paying attention -- the more the better.” 

The scissors stop on the larger of the two hard lumps on Raum’s head, usually concealed by the piled volume of his hair.

“Raum. Buddy. What’s this.”

“Scurs,” says Raum, honestly.

“I don’t know what that means. Help me out here.” Niu must not have been a farmer.

“On a cow, it can happen sometimes when you breed them, when you’re trying to get ones without horns,” Raum says. “Goats, too.”

He’s seen plenty like himself in their number.

“Are _you_ a cow or a goat?”

“No.”

“Then what are you? I wasn’t gonna press you before, I was hoping you’d open up on your own, but now I have to ask: how’d you lose that arm?”

“Do I have to talk about it?”

“This isn’t jail, Raum,” Niu scolds. “You don’t quietly wait for it to be over. This is not a punishment, It’s a _privilege._ Honesty and openness are part of accepting this charity. We were monsters, Raum. This place is a gift, and it’s gonna make us better, but only if we let it. And then we can go home and save everyone else from going the way we went.”

This is the kind of language he’s been hearing from pretty much every rank above his own since breakfast (more moonberry juice) complete with unsettling amount of name-usage. He’s not allowed to talk to other order-ones at all, so he can’t ask them if it sounds insane to them too. 

He can talk to the order-zeroes once he gets out of his initial adjustment period, Niu has explained, but only in the _way of the doctrine._ That is, linking them, evaluating them, checking in on their progress, and counseling them, presumably the way Niu is counseling him now.

“Alright, look, tell me this, before you lost that hand, how many fingers did it have?” Niu isn’t stupid. He’s cottoning on fast.

“Four,” Raum says feeling like the ceiling is coming down on his head. Honesty is part of it. Just play the game. He flexes his right hand, his only hand, and counts them, _one-two-three-four-five,_ drums them against the chair arm. It’s a source of comfort he’s relied on for years. One normal hand, one normal thing, even now.

“Your dad--?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re one of them,” Niu concludes. “Your mother’s--”

“Please, don’t.”

To his _very slight_ credit, Niu actually does shut his mouth, which makes Raum wonder whether he’d actually correctly guessed what he was going to say, or whether it had been something else entirely. Most people who are going to spew that particular bit of rudeness don’t respond to a polite request to reconsider.

It says something about _the message,_ about how deeply it’s _failing_ to reach, that Niu’s standing here going on about how bad they are, but the second he finds out Raum’s only _half_ unicorn-killer (or whatever he wants to call them) it’s right back to the old patterns. His heritage, such as it is, buys him nothing, even now.

Niu cuts off the rest of Raum’s hair in silence. The little protrusions aren’t much, just asymmetrical jagged nubs, but everybody can see them now, except Raum, because there’s not a single mirror in the whole complex.

He gets a link for lying, which he doesn’t think he did, but there’s no disputing a link. As the day goes on he gets a link for slouching, a link for looking at another order-one for too long (“planning to conspire,”) a link for taking more time than Niu’s count-to-100 in the outhouse (consuming nothing but moonberry juice for every meal is starting to get to his stomach) and a link for not sufficiently sharing his feelings with Niu.

Some links come from Niu, most of them come from order-twos and order-threes in the vicinity. When it comes from an order-four, Niu gets one too. It's obvious that he's under as much pressure as Raum is, even if it's of a different kind.

There are lessons, though the word is a stretch. Largely they are given elf tomes describing history from a certain point of view, and told to copy the text. Some of the “students” clearly can’t read, or can’t understand what they’re reading. Raum didn’t go to school, his cousin taught him what he needed to know to run the farm. That included reading and writing and some basic arithmetic, but no history beyond the stuff everybody knows, so he has nothing to compare it to. 

Some of them, order-zeroes mostly, are scholarly enough to have both the ability to comprehend it _and_ a basis for comparison, and their faces betray confusion. (The ones who show it get linked by the teacher for _doubting_ and _excessive reaction._ )

They are assigned to rotating work-groups that take care of everything in the facility, and it occurs to him that he hasn’t seen an elf since the illusionist. He has no doubt that the elves are watching, but humans run _everything._ Somehow this no longer brings him the comfort it did when he first saw Cin and Mevian and imagined that perhaps Soren was right all along. 

He glances up the list at the higher-order jobs, like evaluating and guarding, and then down at the scut-work assigned mainly to order-zeroes and order-ones. Zeroes have a special job unique to them: border bridge construction and maintenance. Raum doesn’t want to think about what _that_ must be like. 

Dinner in the central structure is tense. They aren’t permitted to speak to anyone but their mentor, their juice must be consumed in less than five minutes. Order threes circulate to monitor them, and higher orders watch from the mezzanine. 

At the end, a gong sounds, and Niu tells him, “ _Chaining_ time.”

Up the stairs and onto the catwalk, across to a small room on one side. It is plain, the wood unpainted. Construction is so shoddy there’s hardly a ninety degree angle to be found. 

Mevian welcomes the order-ones and their mentors. Raum hasn’t seen any of this group before except in the bunkhouse, these aren’t the people he came in with. They’ve been here longer. He imitates them, taking one of about twenty-five chairs positioned in a circle. The mentors stand behind them. 

A mentor is called upon to read out the links that her mentee got that day -- walking too slowly, taking more time than the count-of-100 to clean herself, “keeping secrets,” “sour demeanor,” and any number of other tiny infractions. 

When it is done, Mevian says, “begin.”

What follows will stick with Raum as long as he lives. 

It is a cacophony of a sort that he has never heard. Everyone is on the edges of their seats, _screaming at the top of their lungs._ He can only catch bits and pieces of what they say, but it is all cruel, themed after her offenses, but only in part. The rest is just mindlessly vulgar. 

_YOU THINK YOU’RE IMPORTANT--NOT ONE OF US--GET WITH THE PROGRAM--DEATH-SMELLING SCUM--IS THAT WHY YOU TOOK SO LONG--YOU CAN’T WASH IT OFF--_

The target is a woman probably in her sixties, who sits and takes the invective for as long as she can, holding her face still. It only goes on for a minute or two, but it feels like so much longer. When it’s done, anyone that Mevian feels didn’t _truly have their heart in it_ gets _three links,_ Raum included, because he was too stunned to move, and because why would he shout at someone he doesn’t even know?

The noisiest, angriest, reddest-face screamers are praised and told they are working well toward a higher order.

The target woman is told that she has done well in “accepting the benefaction of truth.” 

The focus of the screeching collective beast moves slowly around the circle, to each person in the room, growing increasingly hoarse and furious. The ones who cry, or flinch, or look away are scolded for “refusing the hard work and charity of their peers.” It comes closer to Raum and he tells himself he will not participate in this, he will not shout at anyone else, and when it comes to him, he will just go inside his mind until it is over. 

It is much, much harder than he realizes, and he has built up so many new links by not shouting each time, and during the link-reading, Niu shares the information about his parentage, so they seize upon that to come up with insults. 

It goes on until he cannot stop himself squinting his eyes against tears not of sadness, but of exhaustion, a reaction from his body more than his heart.

When it is quiet again, he opens his eyes to see Mevian himself is squatting in front of his chair, scowling at him from inches away, telling him he’s not _getting it,_ telling him that if he doesn’t _get it,_ maybe they made a mistake about him being order-one. Maybe he can go build bridges on the lava as an order-zero and work his way up from there, how about that? That if he doesn’t _get it_ he can be an order-zero for the rest of his life if he wants. Or if that’s not good enough, he can go into “MQ.” 

Raum assumes for the moment that MQ is bad. He will later learn from Niu that it is short for Meditative Quiet -- a euphemism for a tiny, barren isolation cell reserved for those who really can’t _get it,_ who are _“so filthy with shame they need time alone to release it without staining others.”_

(“So you can meditate until you’re cleansed and ready to join us again. Of course, anyone in MQ starts again from zero, so...”)

They are forever hungry, constantly tired, and always scared, and all that pressure needs a release valve. They are taking it all out on one another, and being rewarded the more viciously they do it. 

Just play the game. 

Just play the game, and you get to go home. Simple, right? Just play the game and maybe you’ll see an opening to escape and they won’t see it coming when you run because you’ve been so good.

By the end, Raum is shouting with the rest of them, and Niu tells him after how impressed he is with how quickly he’s adapting. 

It is late by the time he goes to sleep, and he is woken several times for roll call. It is early when he is called to breakfast.

* * *

When the elves converge on Soren, he is almost to the border. The land is wide and open here, the scalps of the mountains bobbing up and down on the horizon as he rides across easy slopes on a direct path that only sometimes includes a road. They see one another at roughly the same time. 

There’s no avoiding them. If he tries to run away without speaking with them, it will only raise suspicions. 

He has to act natural, like he did helping Ezran escape. He fumbles through his pockets for the emblem he wears around his neck when he’s working and slips it on.

“Well met, sir!” Calls an elf he realizes he knows: Vif, one of the agents assigned to transporting humans. She is accompanied by two others

“Like--Likewise,” Soren says, aware of his posture, trying to look stern and official and not at all sweaty. “Where are you going? Shouldn’t you be closer to the depot?”

“My apologies, sir.” She salutes in the usual Sunfire manner. “I was asked by Minister Runaan to run a delivery directly to Doctrina Limen, and I am on my way back to resume my ordinary duties at present.”

She looks nervous. She couldn’t possibly be _lying,_ could she?

“And who is carrying out those duties now?” Soren asks, breathing from his stomach for a more authoritative tone, the way his old Captain used to do. 

“Hiyren, sir.”

“Well, he’ll have to do it a little longer, then.”

Vif looks up suddenly. “Sir?”

“Surely you wondered why I was so far from the castle,” Soren says, having just had an idea that is either insane or brilliant. “I am carrying out a surprise inspection. I would like you and your lieutenants here to escort me.”

“Yes, sir, of course, sir.”

There. Now he’s not trying to get away from them, they’ll be delayed in returning, and if they report that they saw him, he’ll just seem like he was doing his job extra-hard. It’ll confuse anyone who’s suspicious about his long absence.

Vif barks a command at the two elves with her and they take places around him to lead him right across the border, easy as anything. He should have thought of this sooner. 

_So-rine the Mastermind_ indeed! 

No, still doesn’t work. Still, he’s proud of himself for this one. Besides, actually seeing the school is something he should have done _ages_ ago, either to confirm or dispel his doubts, or at least to know exactly what fate he’s been sending people to. What fate he sent _Raum_ to. 

That’s what General Amaya would do. It’s the responsible thing. The _right_ thing.

* * *

There are no calendars at Doctrina Limen, nor are there clocks.

Time passes in a blur of what feels like, but isn’t, starvation. After all, moonberry juice is all they need, right? He gets used to this in a way, to endless fantasies about real food, but he is told again and again that the juice is helping to _purify_ him, and if he’s still having stomach cramps, that means he is still impure. 

Sleep deprivation and hunger leave him confused and distracted. He forgets things, loses track of what he’s doing, learns to scream on autopilot -- blade to his throat, he couldn’t repeat five minutes later what he said during _Chaining,_ or during lower order evaluations. 

Sometimes he sees the illusionist in the corner of his eye. Is it a trick to keep them in line? Is her _absence_ a trick and she’s really always watching? This is a topic they are apparently allowed to discuss, and he does, at length, though never with his own order, since it is forbidden to speak with them. 

Rumors and gossip follow her, and though no one knows her name, the most credible among the higher orders claim that their elf leaders call her either the daughter or the student of the Guardian of the Moon Nexus. 

The implication being: if this is the student, what capability might the master have?

What purpose is there in fighting it, if the dragons and the elves have always had the strength to simply sweep across the west like a wave and change everything to suit their desires?

He gives out links to order-zeroes for anything and everything, because he has learned that this system has an angle to punish almost every human behavior if it wants to.

He is promoted twice.

Raum’s first mentee is a teeenager named Jes (they always seem to try to make sure mentors are older, if they can.) He knows exactly what the boy is thinking, because he has been through it himself. Jes is angrier than Raum was, though, and less cautious. If he doesn’t bring him in line, Raum will almost certainly be demoted.

Now at order-three, he is permitted to sleep six hours (except the nights he has to stay up and guard those asleep) and he can have a piece of bread at breakfast with his juice (as long as he can choke it down in the allotted five minutes) and let his hair grow long enough to cover his scurs again.

He _does not want to lose these mercies._

So he lies to Jes, telling him he’s thinking about running away, and they should run away together, and when his mentee is relieved (“I knew it, _I knew_ it was insane”) he feels nothing. He lets Jes make a plan, and then turns him in for it during _Chaining,_ and Jes is sent to MQ for his "escape attempt" that never happened. 

Raum is praised for catching him before he had a chance to run. 

He is not the first to do this. There’s no trusting anyone. Maybe it’s better the kid learns that now. 

This may get him close to another promotion.

Storms roll across the land and rain falls on the slash of molten rock that cuts the continent in two, and the canyon fills with steam that pours onto both sides of the wound and makes it hard to breathe outside. 

When he sees Soren, of all people, being led through the fog to the front gate by three cheerful-looking elves, he is certain that this is an illusion too, a test, one meant specifically for him. 

He _will_ pass it.

* * *

“Turn out your lights,” Aaravos hisses. “Turn them out, _now_ \--”

Claudia obeys reflexively. 

Viren bristles, just the same.

“Why?” he says, and then he coughs.

“They’re attracted to light, you--” Aaravos grabs Viren’s hand and clasps in his own, larger hands, covering the light by force. 

In the darkness, there is a brief struggle. Viren tries to pull his hand back and cannot. The boat rocks. He has no choice but to accept the command. 

It is pitch black.

“Aaravos?” Claudia says, her voice sounding small. “ _What_ is look to shine?”

“Claudia, what are you saying?” Viren frowns. He’s the only one who can see it, but it comes through in his voice. “You know how I feel about--”

“I just like to think. I just like to think! He--I can’t--I can’t--” Fear rises in her tone. “I can’t step the claw. My claw!”

“We don’t have time for games, Claudia--”

“It’s no game,” Aaravos says. “I was trying to remember what it was called, those gray things on the walls. It’s a fungus. Filum-deuro.”

Viren struggles to translate. “Burning thread?”

“She breathed it in. So did you, you’re just larger, perhaps more resistant--”

Claudia yelps. “My ends!”

“What is _happening!?”_ Viren demands, as though Aaravos is at fault. He knows better, but panic is needling at him, scratching out his patience. “Will she be alright?”

She’s breathing too fast -- frightened, and rightfully so, it seems, at the mercy of some kind of fungal poison. It was never the sandwich at all. He seeks out her shoulder in turn, for comfort (whose he isn’t sure) fumbling blindly, finding her hand first. 

It is seized up. The flat of her hand is bent back toward her arm, and her fingers are curled tightly. He tries to gently straighten them instinctively, to soothe the muscles, but they are knotted impossibly tight. She makes incoherent, miserable sounds at his touch and he jerks his hand away as if burned, but that seems wrong too -- she lets out a sob and he could swear he can feel it in his own throat. 

“I don't know, I don't--” Aaravos grumbles. “I’ve only heard stories. Travelers found curled up, looking terrified, dead. Survivors who--”

“There are survivors?” Viren latches on.

“Yes, but--”

“How?”

“Would you _listen?”_ Aaravos growls. “It releases spores in response to light and heat. It consumes… something, between mind and body.”

“Like a parasite, but--”

“It’s eating her words, so she’s trying to find different ones, without even realizing it. It’s eating her movements, starting from her extremities inward, and if it gets to her heart and lungs--”

“This is not the time for circumlocution, Aaravos, unless you _wanted_ us to die here? Come to think of it, why _didn’t_ you say something if you knew that fungus was dangerous? Seems _your_ body is immune, that’s awfully convenient!” 

“I _forgot!_ Must I be your _personal encyclopedia?!”_

 _“What other use do you_ **_have_ ** _now?!”_

Viren’s voice echoes up and down the length of the tunnel. Only in the silence that follows does he realize how loud he’s gotten. If there were a speck of light, they’d probably both be staring at him, the way people do, whenever he--

Even Claudia’s whining has stopped. 

Spores or no spores, Viren has little choice but to take a deep breath.

He tries again. “What does she need?”

“Dad!” Claudia says, a word she apparently has not lost. “Sing pity!”

Unable to understand, he ignores her. 

“I’m not certain.” Aaravos’ reply is low, quiet in comparison to Viren’s outburst. Irritation vibrates through his words like a plucked harp string. “The survivors had one thing in common: fresh air. The sooner we get out of here, the more likely we are to survive.”

“And _how_ can we sew a push like--” Viren places his hand on his throat, as if _that_ were the part betraying him, even though he knows it isn’t. The spores have him now. 

There’s a rustling sound, and the boat rocks around them. Aaravos is moving. A metallic clang sounds like the eclipse staff, and a soft growl of concerted effort. A harsh _thud_ on the bottom of the boat, a long scraping noise, and then a _plonk_ of something in the water. 

“What are you going?” Viren struggles to say. He’s half-aware that it’s not right, but his meaning is still stuck in his head, he’s confused, and he feels what must have been the same tingling Claudia felt. 

“You can’t do magic like this,” Aaravos says under his breath. “And as you so astutely pointed out, I can’t do magic at all. Might as well make some use of this stupid thing.”

Viren fumbles in the darkness with fading hands. What is Aaravos _doing?_ He bumps into Claudia and stays there for a moment, the two of them not bothering to try and speak. He can’t grip, but he tries to squeeze her shoulder anyway. 

“Pity,” she says quietly. “I’m pity.”

 _I’m pity, sing pity._ Does _pity_ mean _sorry?_ He doesn’t try to ask, imagining it would likely come out some other way and only add to the confusion, so he presses on her shoulder and makes a shushing sound that he hopes is understood.

He reaches for the direction of the noises from the back of the boat and his curled, increasingly painful hand hits Aaravos’ knee. 

“What?” Aaravos grumbles. 

Viren doesn’t speak. He taps knee, torso, shoulder, arm, metal staff--

Aaravos just indulges him as he blindly follows the metal staff to the water, pulling his hand back when it gets wet. 

He’s pushing the boat along using the eclipse staff like a barge pole, trying to reach faster water sooner. It’s only lucky that this section is shallow enough to allow it, but still, it’s deep enough that he can’t get the kind of leverage he would ideally have. It’s a bizarre mental image, as though they’re punting down a lazy river on a summer afternoon.

Viren taps his way back up the staff and finds the top of it empty. 

“Yes, I removed it,” Aaravos says gently. “Now can I get back to it?”

He pulls away and begins to rake his useless hands along the bottom of the boat beneath the seats. When they hit glass, he clumsily uses his forearms to wrap the stone in Claudia’s discarded outer cloak.

His feet go too, and his arms after. Claudia sidles against him, and with some awkward maneuvering, they sit together on the floor of the little canoe against the wall and listen to their own ragged breathing. 

Viren tries to control his own, in the hope that Claudia will mirror him. It’s difficult, but it works.

As Claudia slowly calms, head on his shoulder, Viren can’t help marveling at the irony that this is probably the best job he’s done at comforting either of his children in many, many years, and only because he couldn’t speak if he wanted to. 

Perhaps he could stand to shut up once in a while.

He rests his head on hers and closes his eyes, not that it makes any difference in the dark. There’s no way he could sleep the way his muscles are seizing up and letting go in turns, but he is as still as he can be, and silent.

Claudia’s breath turns to wheezing. Instead of panicking, though, Viren just keeps his own steady to guide her: inhale, exhale, slowly, deliberately, as much as he can without showing it when he starts to struggle as well. Focus makes his mind quiet.

Eventually, a distant roar stirs him, but he can’t move enough to investigate it. Rushing by the wall of the boat, the water moves faster now. 

Aaravos swears and the staff _thonks_ against the wood and splashes and is almost certainly lost to the river-bottom, but the wind is rushing over them and light -- pale, natural light -- is reaching them! 

“I would say brace yourselves, but, well--” Aaravos shrugs, clambering over them to get off the edge as the turbulence increases. 

Their little vessel bounces and shakes and slams into the widening side of the cavern. It crashes down tiny falls. Claudia coughs. The light is brighter and brighter until everything is white to Viren’s unadjusted eyes.

The river dumps their boat out through a hole in a cliffside and onto a rocky beach powdered with a dusting of early snow. The craft catches on the stones and tips and bucks like an angry horse.

Aaravos pushes himself away and rolls into the surf. 

Viren is thrown clear. 

Claudia is a dark tumbling blur. 

He gasps, filing his nose with cold salt air and feeling _searing pain_ in his head, down through his face and into his lungs. It rockets through his limbs like a lit fuse. He hisses, but keeps _breathing,_ coughing, dragging sea wind into his body until he can stand. 

Little sharp-edged crystalline stones dig into his skin and all he can think is that this stupid, freezing beach doesn’t even have the decency to be sandy.

Ten yards away at most, Claudia is doing the same thing, Aaravos pulling her to her feet.

“Dad?” She says, leaning over on her knees like she’s just run a mile, coughing, spitting. “Are you gonna be mad if I swear this time?”

It’s hard to laugh, still, but he does his best. “I think you’ve earned it.”

He's just happy to hear her saying normal sentences.

“Fuck!” She shouts, scaring some birds high up on the cliff into flight and making Aaravos laugh too. She stands up straight and dusts herself off, not that it helps with being soaking wet. “That was _horrible._ I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my--wait. Where’s the staff?”

“Lost,” Aaravos says. “I removed the stone from it, but the staff itself is…”

He looks into the dark mouth that spat them out. 

“Unrecoverable.”

Viren wades back into the shallow stream rushing into the sea to recover what he can from the overturned boat. The cloak caught the stone, fortunately, and the two together were heavy enough not to get carried away. Everything is completely waterlogged, aside from a couple wax-sealed flasks of clarh that Claudia was carrying around from her battlefield salvage.

Coming closer, she sees the carnage too--her beloved bag, custom-made as a birthday gift years ago, is caught on a nail, ripped apart. Her books are destroyed. Her sandwiches are beyond a lost cause.

“Claudia, I--”

“No. No, it’s okay. We’re okay. That’s what matters. We’ll figure it out.”

For a moment, he admires her composure and tenacity, and laments mildly that he’s fairly certain she didn’t get it from him. 

“And we still have the stone, at least,” Aaravos points out the sodden bundle of fabric and glass in the crook of Viren’s arm, though he also shoots him a slightly sour look. 

Is he still displeased about what Viren said before? It seems uncomfortable to bring it up again. 

Claudia looks around. “But… where are we? What now?”

“This is as far southeast as you can go without walking into the sea,” Aaravos says, his voice chilly, aggravation creeping obviously creeping up on him. “Isn’t this where you wanted to go?”

“You mean where the _buzzing_ wanted us to go,” Claudia protests. “But there’s nothing here.”

Viren closes his eyes. 

He can still hear the hum, louder and more fervent than ever, and when he faces the sea, it seems as though it’s calling his very name in the most beautiful voice he could possibly imagine. 

If he had forever to listen, he wouldn’t mind listening until the world died. He is almost _compelled_ to wander right into the surf. 

“I knew it was madness,” Aaravos says, frustration building like the swell of a wave under his words. “I told you from the start it was pointless. How do you even know it was calling you? If there _is_ a sound, how can you _possibly_ know it’s--”

A bird calls low and loud and there’s movement.. Claudia interrupts Aaravos’ building rant with a full-throated screech of joy, the type uttered exclusively by teenage girls and gray parrots. In it is a syllable which sounds very much like she’s trying to imitate a kitten. 

_“MEW!”_

She takes off running down the beach, shoes squelching underneath her, but can’t go more than a few steps before she gets winded. It might be awhile before either of them recover completely. Viren can hear her making that cat noise under her breath. 

“Claudia!?” He shouts down the strand at her. 

“It’s--” Claudia pants, and then turns to face up at the cliff above them, gesturing wildly.

A dark shape, wings spread against the flat white sky, forces Viren to squint upward. It’s bigger than a messenger crow, and when it banks as it coasts downward, a flash of white feathers--

She isn’t making _cat noises._

She’s saying _Mue._

How? How could it be? Sigrin’s pied ravens were always a little unusual, but the idea that one could follow their path across Xadia even after they’d passed underground _beggars belief._

Briefly and entirely against his will, his heart entertains the idea that Sigrin herself has somehow tracked their steps, that she’ll appear at the cliff’s edge looking down at them or materialize around a corner of the stone face that traces the shape of the beach. 

Despite everything, he almost hopes.

It simply isn’t the kind of thing that happens in reality, however, no matter what secrets she kept.

Mue’s landing is rough and she flutters off the ground and into Claudia’s arms, where she croaks and chitters happily. 

“Ow! Mue, your _talons--_ say hi!”

 _“Hii,”_ Mue mimics meaninglessly. 

“Did you bring me something?” Claudia coos, sitting down on the rocks to give Mue a little more space to bounce around. “Can I have it?”

Mue bends her head and pecks at the slightly tattered paper folded tight and attached to her leg. 

Claudia disentangles it. 

“What?” She murmurs to herself, confused, as Mue wanders into the surf and begins to hop around the waves, feathers fluffed against the cold. 

Viren approaches. Aaravos wanders impatiently in the other direction. 

Cautiously, he asks, “Is it--”

“Mom. But it doesn’t make any sense. Stuff about you being dead, and she loves me but she has to do… something? I don’t know. The letter’s pretty banged up, I think Mue brought it all the way from Del Bar.”

 _“The candle,”_ Viren whispers. Claudia frowns up at him in confusion and he explains, “we had candles. Mine was on the bookshelf in the study, a black candle with a violet flame that never went out. Do you remember?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“As long as it burned, I would know your mother was alive. She had one for me as well. So--”

“When you fell,” Claudia finishes. “So she thinks you’re dead.”

Viren begins to pace.

After a couple more attempts at reading it, Claudia passes the letter to Viren and steps away to make noises back and forth with the bird. Unfortunately, _“banged-up”_ is an understatement. The paper is torn and streaked and warped from being repeatedly soaked-and-dried. Most of the ink runs in drips. It’s only years of reading her handwriting that allow either of them to make out _any_ of it. 

He glances up at Mue again. She wouldn’t have understood it was of little use in its condition. 

What was Sigrin planning when she wrote this? The faraway comforting thought that she would be safe on her mountain no matter what came of his failure is shattered, worry filling the mold and taking its place, infecting a wound bound to fester.

Eventually, as the ceiling of clouds turns gray and then dark, Aaravos returns with a driftwood spear, upon which two large fish are impaled. He throws it at Viren’s feet and gets to pulling pieces off their broken boat to build a fire. 

Without discussion, Viren and Claudia both join him. 

“Useful enough for you now?” Aaravos snipes when they’re alone for a moment, breaking boards of wood while Claudia uses the eclipse stone to bring the flame to life, even with the wind. 

“Aaravos, I--”

“No. Don’t. Perhaps you were right. Until I get _out--_ ”

“Clearly not the case.” Viren gestures to the fish and the fire. 

“What’s next?” There’s an edge on him, but duller than before. If he gets tired, then he must be tired now. “That’s all that matters. You clung to the only action you had available, no matter how foolish, that wasn’t hiding in caves and waiting to die, just so you could feel like there was a future for you after the spire, and _this is where it led you._ A dead end. _What’s next?_ ”

“You _decided_ to accompany us. I don’t know what you want.” Viren looks impatiently around the dark beach. The tide is low now, revealing softer, smoother stones beneath the water. On a clear night, they must shine and glitter, but not in this weather.

Aaravos is right, of course he is. Neither of them seem able to answer the other one’s question. Viren can’t tell if Aaravos is keeping things to himself or if he’s just as lost.

Mue pecks at the rocks, likely searching for a dinner of her own hiding below the surface: little crabs or insects. Her plumage is shiny, she must have found ways to take care of herself, whatever adventures she’s had. 

The fish is acceptable enough -- almost anything would be at this point -- and the three of them eat in silence, Aaravos seemingly lost in his thoughts and Viren and Claudia both too exhausted to talk. 

It’s too cold to extinguish the fire. Viren would rather be warm, even with the risk of being spotted by any of their many enemies. Collectively, they seem to agree that it doesn’t matter anymore.

Even Aaravos sleeps, whether he needs to or not. 

When Viren wakes to a dawn just as gray as the day he left behind, he is fuzzy-headed and thirsty and it takes him a moment to remember where he is. 

He turns to look out at the sea. The tide isn’t quite all the way out, but it’s most of the way there, and nothing makes any sense at all.

Claudia is walking on the water.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Content warning revisited/soapbox moment:** The system of Doctrina Limen (Latin for "threshold of learning") is not something I invented out of whole cloth. It is heavily based on the activities of a drug-rehab-turned-violent-cult from the 1960's called Synanon, and the other cruel, miserable places that that idea spawned, many of which target teenagers instead of adults.
> 
> This isn't to get all "very special episode" on you all, I just didn't feel right describing a fictionalized version without also speaking on the real-world issue, and linking to [ASTART, a watchdog group trying to expose these facilities and steer families away from them](http://astartforteens.org/home).
> 
> I also have to give a shout-out and thanks to [spontaneite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spontaneite/pseuds/spontaneite) whose work [The Speculative Biology of Elf Horns](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17989583?view_full_work=true) includes some very much accepted headcanons some of which went into the development of Raum (his horn anatomy, specifically.)
> 
>   
> Re: the last bit, it was the fungus all along! What Claudia goes through is a kind of aphasia, where the words that come out are not the ones you intend. This is an actual condition sometimes caused by head trauma, disease, seizures, or other neurological conditions. Often the words that come out are connected either by meaning or sound to the desired word. So she says things like "I can't step the claw" when she means "I can't move my hand." (Fans of House, M.D. will likely have recognized it right away.)
> 
> If you'd like visualize Mue being adorable mimicking human speech, [please enjoy](https://youtu.be/POiLhy3nfWQ)
> 
>   
> Final note, just for reference, since they've been underground for awhile and it might be hard to picture where they popped out, [Claudia, Viren, and Aaravos are at the blue star, looking in the direction of the landmass indicated by the red arrow ](https://i.imgur.com/eMx3rtz.jpg)


	14. Book Five: Star | Chapter Five: The Galileo Affair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“What makes night within us may leave stars.”_   
>  **― Victor Hugo, Ninety-Three**

**Book Five: Star**

**Chapter 5: The Galileo Affair**

The Branchfolk tongue was charming when Callum first arrived in Eranenwood, but days of travel through dense, chilly woods have turned it into something _else._ It sounds _different_ when everyone looks at him like this, like he’s possessed by some cruel and evil creature that could leap out of him at any moment to swallow every last one of them.

He wishes he’d been paying more attention when things were pleasant, picking up more vocabulary, but even more than that, he wants to hear the common tongue outside his own head.

In the end it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t understand them, because they don’t speak _to_ him now anyway, only _about_ him, his name darting between unfamiliar sounds like a child interrupting conversation at a formal party.

Again and again, he replays the moment when his earth magic tutor asked him if it was true, if he did dark magic in the Silvergrove. The truth was out of his mouth before he even thought about it, and as dirty as it makes him feel, he can’t help wondering if that was a mistake.

Should he have lied instead of trying to explain himself? Should he have refused to answer? 

He wrote the letter (which they allowed only after a lot of hemming and hawing) while someone stood over him and made noises if it seemed he might say something untoward. It _was_ sent in the end, though, so it must have been approved. 

Now all he has to do is hope Rayla reads it _and_ remembers their code _and_ is in a position to help _and_ is inclined to help him _again._

She won’t give up on him. She _won’t,_ he’s… _almost_ sure of it. 

The thing is, Callum can’t really put his finger on what _“help him”_ might actually _mean._ He doesn’t need to be rescued, does he? It was _one spell._ Surely he isn’t in any real danger. The Eranenwood elves are just doing what Scyntyllah or Zubeia or someone asked them to do, to bring him home so everything can get figured out, and it will. He’ll get home, and Ez will be there, and it’ll be fine. Even with a regent, they still have to listen to him to some extent.

(Did Soren and Claudia make the same assumption when they were under suspicion? That Ez would save them?)

It’ll be fine!

He keeps telling himself that, of course, but no matter how deep he digs, he never hits belief. The words don’t fill the empty panic and anxious loneliness. They don’t cure whatever wordless flash of intuition made him need her, took hold of his hand and made him write the code phrase into the letter.

They sleep in clearings and fields between the woods. Elves watch him politely in turns, and he watches the stars. It’s not cold enough he can see his breath in the air yet, but it’s brisk enough that the sky is growing clearer by the day, more and more tiny spots of light appearing in the cover of the night. 

He tries to remember the names of the stars, and when he is too nervous to sleep he tracks the movement of the earth by the positions they hold. 

Whatever happens, in the sky (far above the clouds and the sun and the moon) all nights are the same. The stars remain steady at their posts, and the world turns beneath them. More enduring even than mountains and the sea, they were there before Callum (or anyone else) was born, and they will be there long after he is gone. 

There’s an odd sort of comfort in it, the knowledge that a year from now, on this spot in the grass, the sky will look the same, and nothing that happens to him will change it. From that thought, he draws the strength to quiet his worried mind. 

* * *

  
Sweetness and dust reach out with soft fingers on the breeze, and the air ruffles the leaves hanging over the river in an affectionate warning of the harsher season to come. The haze of summer has lifted, and with every brisk-edged gust, Rayla watches goosebumps ripple up her mother’s arms. 

“Still cold?” 

“Do I look like I’m made of bloody sugar glass?” Tiadrin rattles off, though she’s flagging, and Rayla can tell. “How many times have I got to say I’m _fine?_ I’m not some doddering elder yet, am I?”

Rayla sighs and slows the pace anyway, just a little. They’re nearly there, and they can afford it. 

“--Enough to make me wonder what’s gotten into you,” Tiadrin mutters under her breath.

It’s still strange, being able to pass through human towns on the western side of the border. They don’t have to wear cloaks or disguises, or sleep in the trees. Instead, they are welcomed at little inns and public houses, all the-same-but-different in every village. Folk are curious, but well-meaning enough for the most part, and if it takes _Rayla_ some getting used to, it must be all the more baffling to her mother.

Days ago, they reached the main city surrounding Katolis castle. Today’s the day they find out whether Runaan ever made it to Scyntyllah. They both know it, and _that’s_ what’s gotten into them _both._

Tiadrin’s been brusque for much of the trip, holding stoicism out in front of her as a shield, deflecting Rayla’s occasional attempts to get close. She’d thought it would be easier, now that it’s just the two of them, her mother would soften, would act more the way she remembers, but nothing’s changed.

“I… worry, is all.” Rayla tries to sound light and airy about it, but she can hear herself not hitting the mark. “I thought maybe you’d want to… oh, never _mind.”_

“To what?”

Well, she’s stepped in it now. She has to raise her voice slightly over the noise of the whitewater that separates them from the castle-bearing cliffside, and it makes the whole thing all the more embarrassing.

“To _talk._ ”

“What’s to talk about?” Clips Tiadrin. “We’re goin’ to find Runaan, aren’t we?”

“Mum!” Rayla actually laughs a little at how ridiculous it is, spelling it out like this, knowing she was _exactly like this_ not so long before. “You’ve been through a lot. It’s…” She borrows a phrase. “It’s _okay_ to not be okay all the time. Callum showed me that--”

“Ah, _now_ it all comes together!” Tiadrin’s teeth appear in a little smile. “The human boy’s been given’ you ideas, has he?”

_“Mum!”_

“I get it. You like him. And I know I haven’t really been there for you to talk to about boys and such. Luna only knows what _Ethari_ ’s been putting in your head. But let me tell you, you don’t have to put yourself and your own _culture_ to the side.” Tiadrin leans forward, and lowers her voice, as if scheming: “You can love a man and still think he’s got no shor’age of shite ideas.”

“ _That_ much I noticed,” says Rayla, feeling the conversation get away from her. 

“Rayla, do you remember what Runaan said, when he started training you? Feelings can be like gibbousnakes. They start small and cute, but they keep growing as long as they’ve got food, and the more they eat, the bigger they get. And the bigger they get--”

“The harder they are to control, and the more dangerous they can be. I remember. But--”

“ _Everything_ we do requires _focus.”_ Tiadrin puts a gentle hand on Rayla’s shoulder. “Even the _good_ feelings can get in the way if we aren’t careful. I know, for me, even _love_ has to be left hungry sometimes, to make sure it doesn’t grow so big I can’t do the work I was made to do. And things like pain and fear? I’ve no’ a jot for those. Starve ‘em out, ignore ‘em, let ‘em wither.”

Rayla opens her mouth to argue but her mother’s eyes are so earnest, and for once, it feels like mother-daughter caretaking is the right way ‘round. Does she want to deprive her of that? 

_I’m not sure I believe that anymore,_ and _I’d be dead if Callum had that attitude,_ and _I don’t think I want to go back to that_ and _maybe that’s not the way after all_ all get tangled with one another and stuck in her throat. 

The first time Ezran called it _sad_ she couldn’t express her fear was like eating a strange new food, or hearing someone speak a different language. It isn’t as if Callum’s always right, but having seen the value of _talking about it,_ she hoped she could share that gift with her family in turn.

In practice, she feels like she might as well try and explain poetry to fish (if she were also a fish who’d only _just_ heard the news.)

There’ll be time later. 

For now, her mother’s got one thing right: they do have to focus. 

A pair of Scyntyllah’s guards hails them from down the riverbank closer to the queen regent’s outbuilding, and Rayla and Tiadrin pick up the pace to get within earshot. Perfect! They’re even Moonshadow, which is a stroke of luck. It isn’t that she dislikes the Sunfire elves, but if anyone knows where Runaan went after he met with Scyntyllah (assuming he got there in the first place) it’ll be them.

“Minister Runaan?” Asks the taller of the two, after a brief hello and a _have-you-seen-this-man_ inquiry. He glances at his partner before looking back and forth between Rayla and Tiadrin. “He’d be up in the castle, but he’s busy, you probably won’t get to him without an appointment.”

 _“Minister!?”_ Tiadrin splutters. “O’what? The department of a stick up the--”

“Justice,” says the shorter one, taking offense on Runaan’s behalf. “Minister of Justice, working with Minster Opeli, and I wouldn’t let folk hear you speak so--”

“Pardon _you,_ I’ll poke a bit of fun at my own brother-in-spirit if I bloody well--”

“Wait,” says the taller one. “You’re his family?”

“Light dawns on Marblehead,” Tiadrin says. 

“Hang on, hang on,” Rayla interrupts. “You said that a funny kind of way. Like you were expecting us.”

The tall one looks back and forth between them again. “Well… he’s lookin’ for you, isn’t he? He told us you were coming, wanted a room made up for you in the castle and all. We thought it was all planned?”

“Planned? We didn’t even know he was _here_ , how could we--wait, how’d he know we were comin’!?” 

“If _you_ didn’t tell him, it’d probably be the network. Ministry of Justice has agents all over. Spies, of a kind. Didn’t you know?”

“Spies!?” Tiadrin coughs. “Spies, Rayla, I think these two’re havin’ a go at us.”

Rayla isn’t so sure, but she doesn’t want to waste time. She thanks them and starts the process of looping back around to where they can cross the bridge to the castle proper. 

With every step, the moment of silly disbelief and joking -- another flash of the mother she remembers -- fades like a dream, and the thick curtain of severity falls between them again. They don’t talk, but Rayla feels Tiadrin’s eyes on her as she and a guard greet each other, polite but familiar, and a steward is summoned to escort them to Runaan. 

She tries to imagine the corridor through Tiadrin’s eyes, the eyes of someone who’s never been on this side of the border. It is grand, but old, the stones of the wall stained with the smoke from the torches, and the air is stale in places. She’ll be noticing things like that, coming to the same conclusion Rayla did: the humans live in a mausoleum. 

It makes her wonder: if she and Callum _were_ to be together long-term… well it reminds her of the old story about the fish and the bird. Love is one thing, but where can they live?

There’s enough stairs and twists and turns that even having been here twice, she loses track of where they’ve gone, and when she looks back at her mother, she sees her own confusion, mirrored and magnified. 

At last, they reach a tall set of doors, and the steward knocks. 

“Minister Runaan!” He says through the doors. “Your visitors have arrived.”

At the shrill _tinging_ of a bell from inside, the steward says, “He’ll see you now,” and opens the doors for them. 

_“Oh, he’ll see you now,”_ Tiadrin mocks under her breath. “Would have seen us whether he wanted or no’.”

Rayla snickers at that. She’s right, it’s not as if they’d have taken _busy_ for an answer. Surely Runaan knows that.

The first glimpse they get of him is of Runaan looking up from a heavy wooden desk piled high with rolls of off-white paper and books. He stands to greet them, and for a half-second, Rayla doesn’t realize it’s him.

His uniform is new -- a strange blend of the familiar teals and greens with the gold accents of Katolis. His trousers are the loose kind humans seem to like, a stylistic match with the _ridiculous_ number of buttons on his front and sleeves.

Then there’s his _hair,_ done up in a spiderweb of braids linking and twining among one another, weaving in and out of a layer of loose cascade. It’s so elaborate Rayla has to stifle a confused giggle, he looks like he just got called away from someone’s wedding.

None of that, though, holds a candle to how odd it is to see a tiny set of _spectacles_ perched on the tip of his nose, below his markings..

“Rayla! Tiadrin!” He’s up and taking long-legged strides across the ornate carpet. “Come in, I’m pleased to see you.”

He embraces them both on the way into the room -- Rayla too -- as though it were a perfectly normal thing for him to do, as though they hadn’t argued viciously at their last meeting, as though they hadn’t nearly fought to the death in the spring. 

He at least has the decency to be a little awkward about it.

“You look so much better,” he says to Tiadrin. “It’s such a relief to see some color in your cheeks, the journey has clearly been kind to you.”

“Can we cut to the chase?” Rayla almost spits. 

“Here--” He indicates to a plush sofa by a dead fireplace. “You must be tired. Please, sit--”

Runaan rings the little golden bell with the red handle again, which summons another man in a tailcoat who takes Runaan’s request for tea and disappears like a squirrel into a tree trunk. The tea-drinking isn’t new, but allowing anyone but himself or Ethari to brew it _certainly is._

As he settles in an armchair adjacent to the sofa, all Rayla wants to do is grab him by those stupid fringed epaulets and shake the spectacles right off his face. What is she supposed to say? A glance to the right tells her that her mother’s in a similar boat, shocked into silence by it all.

“I promise you I haven’t gone _completely_ mad,” Runaan acknowledges. “It’s simply… it’s been…”

He stops, and they watch him collect himself. 

“Queen Regent Scyntyllah, when she removed my binding, called me to serve in this capacity. It is a direct order from the dragons. Surely _you_ both, more than most, can understand the importance of that. I resisted the trappings at first, but I’m finding that--well, humans seem to care a lot about them, and form follows function, I--”

“What in the name of Luna are you _wearin’_?” Tiadrin finally speaks, interrupting like a slap.

Runaan looks at his clothes, and then back at her, his expression a question. 

“On your face, you bloody great owl!”

“Oh! These!” He removes them and goes to set them gingerly on the side-table. “A tool of the trade, it seems. Reading and writing half the day long, catching up on it all, I began getting headaches. I think of them the same way I would think of a blade or a rope, but for this new... _capacity.”_

“What _capacity_ could be so important you can’t even tell your husband what you’re up to?” Tiadrin pours forth with scolding. “Ethari’s worried sick about you! He’s in the Silvergrove right this minute thinkin’ you’re dead in a ditch somewhere!” 

And _there_ goes the odd, newfound warmth, draining out right through Runaan’s shoes, and into the floor, out of him along with the air in his deep sigh. 

“I’ve tried to write, but every time I sit down… it is difficult to know what I should say. Surely he told you we did not part on the best of terms.”

“Neither did we,” Rayla points out coldly, the first thing she’s said in awhile.

“Yes. Well. I suppose I owe _you_ an apology,” he admits, which might even be stranger than the spectacles. “You were... correct, in a way.”

“I was?”

“About peace. I didn’t believe you, but I was wrong. Humans are flawed, and dangerous to be sure, but also far more _malleable_ than I understood. That’s what I didn’t know, what you must have seen.”

“They’re _what?”_ Rayla frowns. 

Runaan stands again, a kind of nervous energy suffusing him that Rayla’s not used to. He steps to the mantel over the fireplace and picks up a tiny silver heartbloom suspended at the center of a glass ball, turning it over in his hands. 

“Of course, some _are_ more stubborn than others. Still, there are solutions there as well. You met Minister Opeli at the Storm Spire, I believe?”

Rayla nods, Tiadrin only frowns.

“She and her followers _despise_ dark magic no less than we do. Indeed, she once worked to limit the influence of, and then to _destroy,_ the very monster _you_ brought down. Well done, by the way. I never said that, and I should have.”

 _“Well... done?”_ The words are sour in Rayla’s mouth. 

Runaan chuckles softly. “You were so eager to discuss your errors in judgment, we never even got to the details of your greatest victory. Yet tales of your deeds have spread. You are more dutiful than I feared was the case, and I am glad of it. There is certainly hope yet.”

“Hope for _what?”_ She _killed_ a man. There was never a choice, it was undoubtedly right, but still, his demeanor, as before, hardly matches his assertions that life _isn’t taken lightly._

She wishes her mother would jump in and say something again, something harsh like before, but Tiadrin’s mouth is pressed tightly shut in concentration, as though she’s trying to solve some puzzle. 

All three of them are missing so much of one another’s stories, they may as well be in three separate rooms. 

“I was not meant to live,” Runaan elaborates. “That is what I believed. Every breath in my lungs is the product of the _abomination_ they called magic. But by the benevolence of the dragons, it is possible for me to turn that _stain_ into something greater, something pure. This is an opportunity to pull out evil at its roots.”

“How’s it different from me and Lain?” Tiadrin asks, voice soft, weighted with considerations. “The… the _stain, abomination_ bit? We’re breathing for the same reason as you.”

“That is between you and Luna, and I cannot tell you how to resolve it. But if you feel the same, my intent _has_ been to invite you to join me, all of you.”

“Ethari too, then?” Tiadrin poses.

Runaan sets the ornament back on the mantel and clasps his hands behind his back. He’s fantasized any number of times since he got here about Ethari at his side, but while he can trust the phantom conjured by his mind, the real thing is another matter entirely.

“Just wait,” he says. “I’ve prepared for you to join me in the ceremony chamber tonight, as guests. It will all make more sense when you _see_.”

* * *

Once he’s seen them off, Runaan quiets himself the way he might do after drawing back his bowstring, before he lets the arrow fly. To an outside observer it would seem strange, the way he stands in the middle of the old Neolandian carpet, frozen between one moment and the next. 

He is taking aim in a different sort of way than he used to, but there are similarities: a focus, a target, a plan and its execution. There are other meetings that afternoon, reports from captains of the elf regiments, a meeting with the illusionist Fadi, and lastly, preparation for the evening’s trials. 

At some point, when the golden rectangle of the sun through the window has finished its climb up the opposite wall, a steward brings dinner. Runaan doesn’t even have to ask, the staff already well-accustomed to his reluctance to take supper with anyone. It is a time for reflection, not for chatter. 

Much to his shock, young Ezran has invited him to his own table _twice,_ but dining with him after being previously assigned to his assassination is one step too far beyond comfort. Two polite declinations were enough to stop the attempts.

Opeli arrives afterward to collect him. Her knock is a light staccato, different from the castle staff, after which she cracks the door open and pokes her hooded head through to say hello before entering. This, too, is part of the rhythm and the ritual. His office is on the way to the ceremony chamber, and it seems right they arrive together, a united front. 

“Your family’s meeting one of the regiments before the ceremony,” Opeli says without preliminaries. “A kind of inspection, I suppose. The young girl, Rayla -- I met her before. I didn’t realize you were… related?”

“Didn’t you?” Runaan tidies the desk and brushes down his coat in front of a full-length mirror. He politely doesn’t say _we came to assassinate your leader and his son together, surely you could have put two and two together,_ but fortunately she manages to reach the conclusion at last, right there in front of him.

“She was a subordinate, then?”

Runaan’s breath comes out in a dry imitation of a chuckle. “More than that. She could be called my… ward, perhaps? Her mother and father were often kept away by duty.”

“Well, it does take a village.” 

“What?” Despite sharing a common language, there are times when the details of usage still create a gulf, and Runaan wonders if there are other things, smaller miscommunications happening that he isn’t even aware of.

“Oh! I’m sorry. We have a saying, it takes a village to raise a child.”

“Ah, yes, I suppose we have similar wisdom, just without an expression to go with it.”

“Runaan--” Her voice takes on a certain tone, a tentative proposal on the way. “I promise I didn’t let on in front of them, but I can’t help thinking this is a little _risky._ ”

“Yes,” Runaan admits. 

Opeli lets out a breath. Relief? “I’m glad you agree. I’m sure they’ll be willing to attend _tomorrow,_ or if not, maybe we can reschedule the--”

“No.”

She stops fiddling with an edge of her outer layer and looks at him, the first signs of lines appearing on her forehead. 

Runaan looks out the window. “Rayla has a choice to make. She must decide what path she is called to follow. Delaying this accomplishes nothing. She must prove herself worthy or unworthy of our trust.”

“And _you_ think she’ll make the _right_ choice.” 

It isn’t a question, but it ought to be. Why isn’t it? What meaning can be divined in only offering a choice when the answer is predetermined?

He doesn’t answer, but when he looks back at her, she nods minutely, clearly understanding he is not speculating.

Is it fear, what he feels? There is a physicality to it, a whirlwind kicking up dust somewhere below his sternum, and a sense of carrying something heavy on his shoulders as he closes and locks the door behind him. Rayla may not be his own issue, but she is no less a daughter to him for it, no matter what disagreements they may have. 

They walk side by side down the cave-like corridors and out into the cool air.

In essence, _two_ Raylas now live in his mind. 

There is the Rayla of steadfast stock, raised and molded into an obedient instrument of justice. She is strong, agile, and in possession of the fortitude to faithfully enact the great will, no matter the cost. Whether assassin or dragonguard, she has the potential to become the best the Silvergrove has ever produced.

And then, there is the _other_ Rayla, whose existence only became clear on the mission to Katolis months ago. This one is too fragile of heart, now damaged -- perhaps by the time spent believing in her parents’ alleged treachery, perhaps by the wolf-in-bumbling-sheep’s-clothing for whom she has foolish affection, perhaps both. Either way, this second Rayla is corrupted in the way of a body too broken by disease to ever recover. It is not her fault, but it may be her downfall. 

(Indeed, Runaan wonders whether this may not be the case of Ethari as well, if he has lost his mind so much he would assist with dark magic.)

Only one of these exists in the real world, and Runaan must keep a firm hand, a clear head, and an unwavering heart if he is to uncover which is real, and which is the illusion.

In the courtyard, he pauses to look up at the steady yellow eye of the moon. Nearly full and waxing, it is the best time in the cycle for revelations of clarity and truth, which makes him wonder if this might not be a destined moment. Silently, he entreats it to cast its cold light upon what they do here tonight. 

_The truth, please._

It watches him back, unblinking.

The ceremony space is already warm from the torches. Deputy Soren’s place remains empty, a reminder of his oddly extended _vacation_ (an alien concept to Runaan) but not a problem: the room is ringed with guards and agents ready to tamp down any trouble, far more tonight than usual.

And besides, there’s always Corvus, another human to whom Runaan admits having become slightly endeared. Distaste for dark magic and devotion to duty are both present in him to a degree Runaan would once have claimed impossible for his species. 

People like him are proof they are not entirely worthless. If the dragons believe the good in them is sufficient to be worth the effort of stripping away the chaff, then may Runaan be their loyal thresher. 

Together with Opeli, he stands at the front of the room. At a bench to one side, Tiadrin and Rayla are already seated, quiet and unsure. 

“Good evening,” says Opeli to the guards. “I’d like to call tonight’s assessments to begin.”

She picks up a small, rounded block of hewn ivory and claps it once, loudly, against a larger stone.

“Corvus,” she instructs, “how many instances are we seeing?”

“Three, Minister Opeli,” he says. He only ever uses her title in this room.

When Corvus looks at the cards in his hands, there is a slight tremor. It is an ill omen. Runaan knows humans tend to look out for their own, and while the deputy has done well in maintaining his emotional distance thus far, Runaan is struck with worry that conflict is brewing within him, that Rayla may not be the only one tested tonight.

Perhaps they all will.

“Captain,” Opeli calls to the guard at the back of the room. “Bring in the first.”

Jacia, of the village Falston, is an auspicious start: she is unrepentant in her fomenting of dissent against dragon rule.

She is offered the opportunity to name anyone who coerced her, or co-conspired, and she declines. Upon being invited to tell her side of the story, she says that while she herself is not a mage, she believes in humans’ right to life and progress, and will not see it stifled. 

“Do you then believe a mage should have the right to _my_ body? Or that of any elf in this room?” Runaan poses. 

“Only if they can _catch_ you,” says Jacia with a tight smirk.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Runaan recites thinly. “As you have proven yourself presently unable or unwilling to live according to the rules of peace, it will be necessary for you to receive training and education that will allow you to participate in the bright future of the continent.”

The little ivory block is clicked against its mate, and the woman is led out, chin held high. 

Well, _that_ will change soon enough. 

Runaan tries not to look at Rayla and Tiadrin, endeavoring to proceed as though tonight is the same as the other trials he has facilitated so far, but he hazards a glance and finds them both encouragingly disgusted.

The second case is an apprentice from Del Bar doing research into more potent uses of unnatural dark power. The discovering agent claims the young man was on his way to some kind of conference, having continued his studies despite the change in the law. 

In the face of a brief explanation of the evil in which he is participating, he admits he _didn’t think about it that way_ and agrees to surrender his supplies and cease the practice. A victory! 

_See?_ Runaan wants to turn to Rayla. _Malleable._

“I’ve heard rumors of your… educational facility,” he says, head low. “I’ll find another field of study.”

Opeli presses: “If you are able to provide the names of others who were due to attend the conference, it _will_ be taken as a sign of good faith.”

“Ma’am, I--How can I turn on them?” His face contorts. “You’re talking about my friends, my mentors--”

“We don’t want to do harm to anyone,” Opeli reminds him. “They will be free to make the same choice you’re making. I myself have personally seen the painful consequences of this road in the former high mage. If your confession saves them from such a fate, it would be a kindness, not a betrayal.”

Her voice is like a winter sunbeam, sweet but not cloying. The young man lists _nine_ names, which Corvus writes out on the parchment where he takes notes, resting on a lectern so he can write but still be standing, ready to act if he has to.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Runaan says, going on to explain that the evidence suggests the _former_ mage is able to adapt and needs no further adjustment. He then asks an agent to accompany him home for the confiscation and destruction of any paraphernalia he may possess.

Once he has left the room, another agent is assigned to keep watch of him undercover, to be sure he spoke honestly, and one of the captains is given the task of taking his regiment to search for those he named.

It is clean and smooth, the perfect demonstration of the endpoint of his labors, Runaan could not have planned it better himself, and a certain confidence takes root in him.

His fellows, however, do not seem to share it. Opeli’s eyebrows form an inverted V of concern, and Corvus has placed his hands stiffly at either side of his lectern.

Opeli doesn’t say anything this time, only nodding to the guard at the back of the room. In Runaan’s peripheral vision, Rayla sits a little straighter, perhaps noticing the change in the atmosphere, a sense that everyone but her (and Tiadrin, of course) knows what’s coming. 

Prince Callum is bound when he walks through the door. 

There was never any choice but to restrict his hands and feet in chains to mitigate the unusually literal _flight risk._ His hair has grown a little longer and more unruly than Runaan remembers, and the time spent outdoors has put a touch of sun on him -- on his complexion and on the faint highlights at the top of his head.

When he looks up, open hope and worry fight over the set of his jaw. His fringe must move out of his peripheral vision, because he startles.

“Rayla!?” He blanches, and the drained color on his face is replaced with pink. 

Rayla’s eyes are so wide and her pupils so large, the aster color of her irises is almost entirely lost. Her shock is so palpable Runaan could swear he hears her heartbeat. 

“What!?” She looks at Runaan and then back at the boy, leaping to her feat. “Callum! I didn’t know--”

“What _is_ this, what is she doing here!?” Callum directs at the front of the room. “Where’s Ezran? I thought he’d be--”

“Silence!” Runaan calls. 

A particularly astute guard shifts into the space between the two, ready to stop whichever one of them makes a forbidden move. Runaan is well aware they’ll need more than one to stop her if she tries anything, but he appreciates the gesture.

To her credit, she obeys, looking at him plaintively, but sitting back on the bench. 

A breeze comes through an open window and brushes the torches, making the shadows against the red mosaic floor flicker and stretch. The panels that are closed have no light behind the stained glass, and the firelight from within makes the designs look flat and ghostly. 

This trial is different, by necessity, because Callum was not discovered by an agent. 

As such, he and Opeli face one another. 

“Minister Runaan,” she says, the way they planned. “You have accused Prince Callum of dark magic, and therefore subversion of peace with Xadia--”

“He was forgiven by Zubeia!” Rayla shouts, standing up again and then struggling as Tiadrin hushes her and pulls her back. 

Opeli repeats, ignoring the interruption: “You accuse Prince Callum of dark magic. Please explain.”

Runaan turns to face the room. Opeli, at his left, warms his face with her focus, but still glances away at the prince from time to time.

Corvus isn’t writing, the pen is not in his hand.

No matter. 

“Your former High Mage used horrific dark magic to imprison three souls -- mine included -- inside golden coins. On the order of Luna Tenebris, these coins were to be placed in enchanted water to soothe our tormented spirits. Instead, Prince Callum used dark magic to tear us from our cells. 

“While it is true his _prior_ use of dark magic was forgiven by Queen Zubeia, this was on the condition that he never again wield unnatural power. 

“In summary, he has collected living things from Xadian soil for the purpose of dark magic, performed dark magic himself, and he has wilfully broken a promise to the Queen of the Dragons. It is my belief this constitutes subversion of peace with Xadia.”

“Some might say,” Opeli asks carefully, slowly, as they prepared in advance, “that he saved your life. What would you say to that?”

“I would say I was already dead. My life was forfeit, and I was to be given rest. Had I the choice, I would be imprisoned in honor rather than freed by corruption.”

There are mutterings between Tiadrin and Rayla that stop the moment Runaan looks in their direction. 

“Thank you, minister,” Opeli says. 

“Thank you, minister,” Runaan repeats. 

“Prince Callum,” Opeli addresses. “You may speak now, if you wish to provide additional or differing information. If you were compelled, you are welcome to tell us _who_ compelled you, and if you provide information about others who pose a risk to peace, it will be taken as a sign of good faith.”

“Thank you,” manages the boy, apparently remembering his manners. “I wasn’t compelled. I don’t know why you have Rayla here, but if it’s because of me: she didn’t want me to do it. She was really mad at me. Right?” 

He glances over at Rayla, chapped lips forming a pinched smile. 

“Yeah, furious,” she agrees weakly.

Callum swallows and squares his shoulders. The next time he speaks, the fear and strain seem drained away. _Everything_ seems drained away.

“Everything you said is true. I did dark magic to release you and the other Moonshadow elves from the coins, to save your lives. I know you didn’t want me to, but I don’t regret it. If I could go back in time, I would do the same thing.” Callum turns his eyes to the dais, then, and fixes Runaan with a stare as unblinking as the moon. Firmly, loudly even, he says, “I did it by myself. _No one_ helped me.”

“That’s a lie!” Rayla says. “Why are you sayin’ that! It’s a lie!”

“Rayla, don’t, I’m trying to--” Callum tries to stop her.

She’s on her feet for a third time. “Runaan! You _know_ it’s a lie! Going to let him take all the blame, are you?”

“What are you doin’!?” Tiadrin pulls at her. “Have you lost your _fool_ mind? _Sit down!”_

“What does she mean?” Opeli murmurs to his left. 

“Minister?” Corvus says.

“Rayla, are you sure you want this?” Runaan says low in his throat.

Rayla points an accusing finger. “I want _you_ to live up to your own _stupid_ standard! I hate that he did dark magic, but if you’re going to put _him_ away somewhere, then he can’t be the only one, can he? It’s both of them or neither! You’re the one who has to ask yourself if _you_ want this!”

“Prince Callum,” Opeli insists, as the whole thing goes off-script, “what is the meaning of this? Why is she claiming you’re lying?”

“Because--” Callum takes a couple of quick breaths and seems to brace himself. He doesn’t look at Rayla. “I am, I am lying. Sort of. I wasn’t alone, there was someone who helped me, but I, uh... forced him, okay? There. It wasn’t his fault and--”

“A name, Callum,” Opeli insists, forgetting his title in her impatience.

“No.”

“What do you mean _no?”_

“No, I’m sorry, but no.”

Runaan’s fist comes down on the podium. “Why are you protecting him?”

“The same reason I released you even though you killed my dad.” Callum says, a dark fog settling on his words.

“Fine then,” Runaan says, silencing the chatter among the guards with the clap of the ivory stone. “As you have proven yourself presently unable or unwilling to live according to the rules of peace--”

“No!” Rayla screams “You can’t _do_ this! He’s not going to do it again! It’s _done!_ Let it be _done!_ ”

“It will be necessary for you to receive an education--”

“He saved your life! And mine! And Prince Azymondias’!”

On the surface, Rayla is ignored as though she weren’t present, but the murmurs begin again around the room.

“However, it seems dark magic has taken you as a disease, as is frequently the case in those who use it,” Runaan continues, dragging the situation back into the bounds of the plan, steel settling in his gut. “Rather than send you away, you will be confined in isolation to your own room here in this castle for treatment of your illness, for protection from further corruption, and to ensure you are not able to contaminate--”

 _“Bull-shit!”_ Rayla storms up the dais, squirming away from one guard and then another. “You’re just doin’ that ‘cause he’s a prince and everybody _likes_ him! Can’t lock up a prince, can you!? Everyone knows he’s _good,_ so if you send him him away they’ll know it’s all _pish_ and--”

“Silence! He is diseased! And if you cannot control yourself I wonder if you aren’t as well!”

 _“Silence yourself!”_ She parries. “I’m no’ going to let you go around tellin’ people he’s sick while you’ve got him locked away and you think you’re going to get--let go of me! This is _insane!_ Callum! I _swear_ if I had have known--don’t touch me you--you--”

Runaan indicates with a gesture for Callum to be removed. Corvus follows along with the guards, whatever he says to Callum is too quiet to hear. 

“Rayla, it’s fine!” Callum calls over the noise of the rising scuffle, chains clinking as he holds up his hands, looking back over his shoulder the entire way to the door. “I’ll be fine, we’ll figure it--”

“Calm down!” Tiadrin’s in the fray now, though it’s unclear who she means. 

Runaan bangs the ivory against the stone, helplessly.

Whatever Callum says next is lost, and then he’s gone, the door closed behind him.

Rayla had to leave her blades outside, but she hardly needs them. The elves are better opponents than humans, but it’s practically a spar, both sides trying not to do real harm, only to grab or disable. 

She moves like water, like a dancer. Despite it all Runaan can’t help feeling a tinge of pride. In the chaos, she slips out of a hold, sees the sheer number of agents at the door, and is gone through an open window like a lost bird.

So: he has his answer.

“Rayla!” Tiadrin screams out the window after her. “Rayla come back!”

“Minister, do you want to send a regiment?” Asks a young Sunfire captain.

“No,” Runaan says, holding up one hand and using the other to massage his temples. 

The door slams behind Tiadrin as she runs after Rayla. 

“Forget it,” Runaan says. “She’s so soft-hearted as to be practically harmless if you don’t corner her, but as skilled as any three of you if you do. Lock up her weapons. If she is seen, report to me, but _do not engage._ The only thing that matters is that she is not permitted to return to the castle, to prevent contact with the _diseased prince._ Do you understand?”

Noises of assent are followed by captains arranging their agents and plans being made. Opeli, in a huddle of captains, suggests elf accompaniment to the human guards, particularly around the full moon, and Runaan’s jaw relaxes slightly.

He isn’t alone, no matter how it may feel. His people are good, and they are doing their best. Sunfire and Moonshadow and even a human, all working together. It’s proof they’re doing the right thing, isn’t it? This is what Queen Zubeia wanted, and her will be done. 

The soldiers shuffle out, and the room is quiet. 

“Runaan,” Opeli says, hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry it didn’t go the way you hoped. I see now why you were so insistent.”

“I appreciate your sympathies, but they aren’t necessary.” He shrugs her touch away, and she withdraws the hand. “Truly, thank you, but it is better we know the truth. As you said yourself when we met, peace is too fragile to be held in the wrong hands even for a moment.” 

She withdraws the hand and leans on a window-frame instead. “Of course. Yes. You were right -- I can only imagine if you’d trusted them, not knowing.”

“Disaster would have been inevitable.” He made that mistake with Rayla once. Never again.

“Still,” she presses, “it’s alright to be upset. I am too. Prince Callum... I feel awful. I never imagined he would do a thing like this, I even wondered if maybe--”

“I lied?” Runaan snaps.

“No, no,” she says, graciously taking no offense. “I guess I just hoped there was some misunderstanding, that his side of the story would reveal something that made it all make sense. He truly couldn’t stop, could he? I suppose it really is a sickness, in some sense.” 

Runaan joins her by the window. Outside, the guard is changing, already starting to rearrange according to the new specifications. 

Later, when he is back in the stifling human bedchamber he’s been given, he thinks of what he used to do on difficult days when the world itself seemed to be his foe. He imagines the circle of Ethari’s arms, and the soft rumble of his voice, the one soul in his corner no matter what.

Tiadrin’s words come back to him, her claim that Ethari was worried, and the snarl of guilt and hope it brings is almost overwhelming. 

He imagines if it had been Ethari and not Tiadrin to visit him. Runaan isn’t sure he’d have opened the door at all, for all he’d have been subsumed by the memory of the clearing: Ethari defending the monstrous child and admitting his own complicity in bringing evil to a silverpool. 

How could he not have known better? Life was never going to be easy for them, Runaan’s duties were always dangerous. They accepted the risks years ago. It was no excuse to fall into the trap of dark magic.

In the dungeon far below this very room, it was thoughts of Ethari that tempted him to surrender, to do anything to return home, but that also gave him the strength to never give an inch. 

For all his dreaming, though, he can’t even bring himself to write a single letter. 

* * *

Alone in his room, Callum catalogues the bruises on his wrists and ankles. The agents weren’t bad to him, really, and Corvus was nice the way he explained everything, even if Callum still doesn’t understand why they’re all convinced he’s _sick_ . It’s only that the chains and manacles were heavy and he’s clumsy enough as it is when his limbs _aren’t_ weighted.

Obviously he isn’t sick, and he’s pretty sure Rayla’s right that it’s a smokescreen, something to do with him being a prince, but what was he going to do? Yell at them? It’s not as if that would get him _better_ treatment, or convince them he’s normal.

No, frustrating as it is, all he can do is _still_ cooperate, to show he’s not crazy or whatever claim they’ve decided to make. He _has_ to stay calm, or he’ll prove them all right. The calmer he is, the less of a case they can have to call him dangerous, and the sooner this will be over.

He’s normal, and he’s not going to do dark magic again, and surely if he does what he’s supposed to do, they’ll see that and let him go free.

As soon as they do, he _will_ have to find out how Runaan wound up involved in his fate. That seems… salient. Surely if it were only Opeli in charge, the way it was before, things would have been different? 

Right?

Mainly, he’s fixated on Rayla. Seeing her again was amazing and horrible all at once. Humiliating, the way he was chained up and a mess and clearly in a lot of trouble, but all that fades to the background when he thinks of how she stood up for him. 

He’s not glad she’s upset, but he can’t help the surge of stabilizing, _sustaining_ happiness at knowing that when push came to shove, she loved him -- not just love as a _feeling_ but love expressed as choice, as action. 

Some part of him still thinks this’ll all work out, somehow, though his hope for the kind of resolution he’d originally imagined _is_ starting to flounder.

At least if he’s going to be locked up, it’s here, with his books and his drawing paper and everything. So _that_ could be worse.

“Always a bright side somewhere, right?” He mutters to himself. 

The thing that gets him is, the door to Ezran’s room has been bolted shut -- even Bait’s little door is nailed down -- and there are _bars_ on his windows. 

He sidles around behind his desk to inspect them: heavy, dark iron, as thick around as a sword hilt. They bend out from the castle wall like bows to fit the outward curve of the window panel itself, and allow the panes to open. At least he’s allowed a bit of fresh air.

It’s not that he’s trying to escape when he puts parts of his body (a hand, a foot) through them, he’s just… testing them. 

No, definitely too close for him to slip through, even if he wanted to.

Trying to put his head between them, though, gets him close to them. They’re bolted in with huge steel pegs driven deep into the rock. Given that, and considering the shape and size of the windows? It can’t have been easy, which gets him to wondering _when_ they did it. 

It’s not as if they could have managed it in a single afternoon, or even a single day. They couldn’t have been _planning_ to imprison him here all along?

Was his fate really decided before he walked into the room?

If it was, what was the point of the trial?

Wondering about it keeps him awake, even after he tries to sleep. Mom used to tell dad that if he couldn’t sleep, he shouldn’t just stay in bed, he should get up and walk around or try to read something to take his mind off whatever’s bothering him. 

He can’t walk too far, so he sits in the dusty space behind and to one side of his desk against the window glass.

At first he’s thinking of Rayla, and looking for the moon, but it’s somewhere else, not visible from this window at this angle, so instead he goes back to what he’s been doing a lot of lately. 

He watches the stars.

* * *

“So?” Ezran sits on the edge of the bed, Bait curled tightly against his leg. It’s late. Ezran doesn’t even need to tune specifically into Bait’s speech to know he’s tired. “How did everything go? Can I see him now?”

Corvus’ expression and his posture, stiff on the chair, give it away: the news isn’t good. He glances at Ylai, where he stands by the door, and then back to Ezran.

“King Ezran--Don’t make that face,” Corvus laughs despite himself. “You’re still my king, regent or no. I only wish I didn’t have to say this.”

“Just say it. It’s not like it’ll feel better if you wait.”

“Wise.” Corvus takes a deep, steadying breath. “The truth is, your brother is very sick.”

“What?” Ezran’s face scrunches in confusion. “Sick how? I thought he was okay. I told you about the… you know...” 

_The secret letter,_ the one Ezran’s spoken of _only_ to Corvus, not even to Narampu and Ylai.

“It seems the effect was greatly delayed, and things got significantly worse once he passed back across the border. Something about Xadia may have been… protective. He may believe even now that he isn’t ill, but please believe _me._ ”

“I do,” Ezran says, “I believe you, I just don’t _understand_ you. What is it? Does he have a stomach ache? A fever? Is he in pain?”

Corvus sighs again, and it makes Ezran feel a little bad, a little guilty. He knows Corvus cares about Callum, he must be upset too.

“He said things...” Corvus says. “Like he would do it again if he had the chance, and then he claimed to do it by himself, which your friend Rayla said was a lie... Maybe he was confused. I’m not a doctor. I think he _is_ in pain. He looked that way to me.”

“He was lying? Why? If he’s sick, and you can’t explain it, can I _talk to a doctor_ about him? _”_ Ezran just wants to understand. He wants to know what’s happening, and all the words seem to make things foggier instead of clearer.

“Of course. In the morning, I’ll have one sent to meet you at breakfast.”

“Can I talk to _Callum?”_

“That’s just it, you can’t. His… delusions, or confusion, or whatever it is… we can’t take the risk of exposing you to him right now. Once he’s stable--”

“He’s not _stable?”_

“Not exactly.”

“Please!” Ezran hears the whine in his voice but he doesn’t care. “Please let me go to him!”

“I can’t. I was told in no uncertain terms no one is allowed near him, for his safety and theirs, except for basic necessities.”

“For how long!? He won’t even be able to do sky spells in there, there’s no wind or anything! He’ll be so _bored!_ And what if it takes too long and he forgets how!?”

Corvus looks at the dark floor. “I don’t know. I know you love your brother, but that’s why you can’t see him. We have to wait until they say it’s okay.”

“Is he going to… to be okay?” Ezran’s throat tightens. “I can’t--!”

The tears start somewhere behind his eyes, deeper inside his face behind his cheeks and forehead, and they fill his vision before they fall. Despite himself, he reaches out to Corvus, who tips forward out of the chair to kneel on the floor by the bed, where he can envelop Ezran in a tight hug.

“I can’t do this,” he says into Corvus’ shoulder. “I can’t do it without him! Mom’s gone, dad’s--dad’s--”

“I know.” Corvus pulls him tighter. “I think he’ll be okay, eventually. I hope he will.”

Ezran does too, he hopes, he hopes with every bone in his body, but he cries anyway, clinging to the sides of his jacket and darkening the fabric with tears. 

Corvus is solid and warm and doesn’t let go until Ezran does. 

When the storm passes, and the tide of his breath grows more regular, he finds himself buried beneath ten tons of exhaustion, pressing on his body.

Even then, Corvus tucks him into bed and stays with him, sitting in the chair until he falls asleep. 

Ezran dreams, then. 

He dreams he is flying around the Storm Spire in the night air, far above the clouds. He is keeping close to the edge, but growing bolder by the day. His mother is sad, and he doesn’t know why. Other dragons come to meet with her, sometimes many times a day. They seem angry and mean, and after they go, she is often sad, or a little angry, though sometimes she is calm.

The only time she seems happy is when they’re flying together, or when she’s teaching him something new. 

He misses his weird, fleshy friends, and his mother misses someone too.

Sometimes he is scared for no reason, or sad for no reason, and he has dreams of being in a little room and not being able to fly, and--

 _Oh,_ they both think. _We’re here together again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While writing and editing, I am always doing horrible impressions to test out lines. I spent so much time muttering to myself in a (probably terrible) Scottish accent while writing this chapter that I now feel like my internal monologue is being narrated by Ruth Connell. (And speaking of whom... gold star to anyone who spotted the sneaky Supernatural reference)


	15. Book Five: Star | Chapter Six: Occultation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“In darkness lies a mystery that has the power to shine brighter than true light.”_   
>  **― Luis Marques**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Content warnings:**
> 
> In one scene: allusions to and discussions of sex, a non-explicit depiction/mention of nudity. 
> 
> In another scene: Mention of/implication of human trafficking (no actual trafficking is occurring, on or off screen, just a suggestion and a misunderstanding.)
> 
> This is a few days later than I planned, life being life, and things getting shifted around, but here it is! :-)

**Book Five: Star**

**Chapter 6: Occultation**

Viren hisses Aaravos’ name, and it’s a kind of rescue. Aaravos hadn’t intended to sleep, exactly, and went too deep, feeling the connection between his mind and his flesh stretch its tether. He could smell the ancient books in his prison, feel the hard floor against his cheek where he left his body when he was dragged abruptly the rest of the way into this half-finished pile of elements. 

Waking to find his flesh dimpled with indentations from the rocks he slept on is a perverse relief. 

“Look,” Viren says, and Aaravos does, though it takes a moment before he’s adjusted enough to realize what’s being indicated: Claudia, standing amid the waves, arms out to either side like a tightrope-walker. 

Curious.

Viren calls out to her, and she twists around, beckoning, which causes him to scowl but ultimately he does get to his feet, heavily favoring one leg.

Aaravos scoops up the eclipse stone and follows him to the water’s edge.

“I saw it at low tide,” Claudia says, once they’re close enough that the wind won’t scatter her words. “And good thing, right? Don’t worry, it’s not as slippery as it looks.”

Saw  _ what  _ at low tide? She’s quite evidently walking on  _ something,  _ but whatever it is, it’s invisible. When he glances right to speak to Viren about it,  _ he’s  _ frowning at the space around Claudia’s feet. 

“Well? What  _ is  _ it?” Aaravos demands. 

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” Viren says with the thoughtful air of a biologist examining a preserved specimen. He takes a couple steps into the water and puts his hand out, touches a point in the air exactly like every other, to Aaravos’ eye. “It looks like ice, or glass, but it’s clearly neither. Claudia, you said this appeared at low tide?”

Viren steps gingerly up onto the watery nothing, standing next to Claudia, looking out at the ocean. 

Claudia agrees. “ _ Appeared  _ is a strong word. Whatever it is, it’s definitely magic.”

“ _ What  _ is?” Aaravos ears tip backward in irritation.

“What do you mean--” Viren looks back. “Oh. You... can’t see it.”

Aaravos only grimaces, because  _ obviously  _ he can’t see it. 

“It’s a bridge!” Claudia says, tapping her foot on it. “I think. Can you touch it, at least?”

Swallowing his discomfort, he reaches out toward where something solid should be. Only with an embarrassing amount of fumbling does he find anything to touch. 

Viren reaches for Aaravos’ hand and pulls him up. As soon as they make contact, everything changes. 

And last night, he was convinced they’d hit a dead end.  _ A dead end! _

The wide panel of the bridge’s surface stands just above the dark line of the sea, little curls of water splashing against it, pillars of wave rising up staggeringly only to be stopped short with a  _ thunk _ by the transparent underside. 

_ Invisible  _ isn’t exactly the word anymore, but even now it blends in, as if it were made of glass, or mirrors. Even at its most visible, he has to squint. Today being no sunnier than yesterday doesn’t help matters.

Claudia’s assertion that it wasn’t slippery turns out to be perfectly correct. Even as the rising tide sloshes across it through the crystalline posts of knee-high rails. A particularly strong wave wets their shoes to the ankles, but the bridge and their feet alike are steady.

What’s more, the view ahead is very,  _ very  _ different than it was moments before.

Yesterday and last night, the drab horizon was interrupted only by a chunk of wild black rock, sticking rudely out of the sea in the distance.  _ Island _ was far too generous a word to use, it was more like a boulder that went for a swim, out there with no purpose other than to be lashed by the elements. Aaravos would have been surprised if even gulls bothered to land there. 

Now, instead of lifeless stone, he can see, clear as anything, the ridge of a modest, tree-covered mountain, scalloped like the profile of an enormous head lying back in the pewter surf. It slopes steeply in places and gently in others, down toward the continent, ending in the pale edge of the beach. 

This is much more alarming: it isn’t hard to imagine a magical bridge being constructed while he was in prison, but the island cannot possibly be so new, and he has  _ never seen it in his life.  _ Overhead, Mue wheels in circles on one breeze or another, and Aaravos finds himself jealous of the vantage point.

Viren lets go of his hand, and it all vanishes again. He’s standing on thin air, looking out at dead rock and nothing more. It’s disorienting, and he tries not to let it show on his face. 

“Claudia,” warns Viren, “I _ agree _ this is likely the way forward, ultimately, but--”

“But you’re worried it’s going to disappear at noon, or at night, or when the sun comes out, or randomly halfway into the ocean, or something like that, and we’ll all die.” Claudia preempts as she counts off on her fingers the problems she’s already imagined. “ _ But-- _ ”

“But what?!” Viren argues. “Those are all perfectly legitimate concerns!”

“ _ But,  _ have you got a better idea? Or  _ any _ other idea  _ at all?” _ She challenges. “Isn’t this  _ exactly  _ what you always complain about: having to defend your plans to people who have no alternatives to begin with?!”

In the few mentions Viren has made of his childrens’ mother, he’s suggested Claudia is more immediately similar in appearance to her than to him. Right now, though, in the stubborn set of her jaw and the accusation of her brow, the resemblance between father and daughter is  _ uncanny.  _ She could be his mirror. It’s hard not to laugh. 

After the underground river, it’s understandable he’d be a little jumpy at the prospect of a narrow, unknown path, even moreso with so much already lost. Still, she’s right. They have no food or shelter or fresh water, and the only way backward is a cliff Claudia  _ might  _ be able to climb, but Viren almost certainly couldn’t, especially with his leg as it is this morning. 

He must recognize she’s right, because he has no answer. Worry and resignation win the battle for his expression. 

Mind long since made up, Claudia turns on her heels and sets off across the water.

Viren’s hesitation is brief.

Aaravos doesn’t say anything, he just glances down at Viren’s bad leg. It’s not too miserable of a walk, but it’s a long way to limp. 

“The weather,” Viren says quietly with the tight grimace he’d been hiding when Claudia was looking. Impatiently, he adds, “Or maybe sleeping on the beach, or both. Normally I’d have a spell for the worst days.”

“Or a staff,” Aaravos agrees ruefully. One lost at the spire, and one swallowed by the tunnel, nothing left to lean on. 

Blood spells are a strange thing, a way of reaching out and touching fate itself, and they always have consequences, ripple effects for which no one, not even Aaravos, can account in advance. Now Viren would benefit from a crutch, and Aaravos would prefer to be able to see where he’s going, and each can supply what the other lacks in the simplest way.

If he could look at the stars right now, if it were night, and clear, he would ask them if they found this funny. He would know better than to think he’d ever get an answer.

“It seems we could both use a  _ hand, _ ” Aaravos says, offering his in the customary, cryptic way.

Viren takes it with a blend of trepidation and resignation, just a shade softer than the way he used to place Aaravos’ worm on his ear. 

The bridge and the island flood back into view. 

Aaravos can’t hear the call Viren and Claudia can, but when he looks ahead, he gets the overpowering sense that some version of him is already out there, a foregone conclusion, and all he can do is catch up to it. 

* * *

Back in Katolis, there would be a chill on the air. It’s easy for Amaya to picture heavy cloaks coming out of storage, plans made for late harvests and early frosts. She’d be making winter-squash pancakes in the mornings. Not here. When asked, Janai claimed (not without some bitter dread) Lux Aurea  _ does  _ have a winter, though Kazi privately speculated it is still much warmer than what Amaya would be used to, and Janai only thinks of it as cold  _ comparatively  _ to the summer.

Endless sun will do that, Amaya supposes. At first, she found it dull, like the tedious opulence of the central city itself, unchanging as the ever-present face of the sun and enjoyed by a people who live for centuries, likewise outwardly immutable. 

The first time she sees the rain in the daytime is unforgettable: the clouds veil the mountains with pillars of silver and march across the hills, only to crash into the invisible barrier of the sun’s column around its nexus. There, they part like torn cloth, roiling, stirred violently at the edges so the entire area becomes the adamant eye of a storm. Electricity streaks up the cloud-wall and down onto the lower city’s abundant lightning rods, and chest-punch waves of thunder come after, rattling the balcony rail despite the clear sky above. 

As the rain moves on, the mass merges again at the other side and settles once more into its ordinary rhythm on the vast farmlands beyond.

Since then, she’s been waiting for another day like that, only to find they are vanishingly rare. Not many rain systems actually get close to begin with. While little pockets of drizzle or mist wander the land like lost giants, soaking Lux Aurea’s crops as they go, she is reliably disappointed when the wind blows them away before they ever surround the nexus.

Today, though, the morning sees an energetic fluttering in the sheer drapes separating the otherwise-seamless indoor and outdoor parts of the rooms. The breeze carries the smell of distant water and the strange, buoyant sense of anticipation, a deep breath before a dive. 

It feels different, and as she goes about her new routine, she gets the sense she’s not the only one aware of it. 

There is breakfast, and training (something she has felt much better since insisting upon) and a bath in an enormous sunken tub that has its own private chamber, something apparently common to most homes in the upper city.

For Gren, the cuisine is one of the best parts about peace with Xadia, but for Amaya it’s _ this.  _ Water runs to and fro in unseen pipes, and two levers control the temperature and pressure as it enters the basin, a thing which continues to delight her, much to the amusement of the locals. (On first examination, she thought it the product of magic, but Kazi explained it was mainly engineering, with just a  _ little  _ magic helping to achieve the temperature.) 

Katolis never struck her as primitive, but the fact that Lux Aurea has hot water that comes out of the wall on command has her rethinking the notion, and wondering what it would take to build such a system back home.

Janai slides a bit of sienna-colored fabric under the door rather than knocking, an announcement of both her presence and her identity. The timing suggests a possible lunch invitation, but it takes very little effort to coax her into a shared bath instead.

The first time they kissed, it was dawn at the storm spire, a tiny sliver of sun illuminating the mountainside, both of them still drunk from the party the night before. Since then, it’s been fits and starts, a different kind of relationship every day.

Whatever this is, Amaya has no shame about it. They’re no longer at war, they undeniably like each other, she doesn’t see the problem with exploring that. It’s not so easy for Janai, who can’t truly seem to pull away, each attempt no more sustainable than an archer trying to hold a bow at full draw forever, the arrow aimed straight at Amaya’s bed.

When they were young, Sarai would joke about Amaya’s tomcattish attitude toward women and relationships. Then she was promoted, and there was always so much to do, so much at stake, what time could she possibly have to  _ find  _ a wife, much less be a decent partner to one?  _ Married to the army,  _ she would say, when people asked if she was single. Now, it’s hard to find words for what her situation is.

Between the magical tablet and Janai’s gradually-improving sign, they get by at communicating when they’re alone, but it helps that they don’t do a lot of  _ talking  _ in the first place _.  _

They  _ will  _ have to discuss this eventually, but Amaya’s in no particular hurry. She surprises herself with her own patience, likening their bond to a seed of unknown origin. The only way to know what sort of flower it is is to watch it grow, a thing that happens at its own pace.

On this occasion, neither of them even starts much of a conversation until the tub has been drained. They dry off in the air, a study in contrast on the daybed inside the array of cusped arches dividing the room from the veranda.

Amaya points to the sky. 

“Can you smell the storm?” she signs, a little more stilted and exaggerated than usual, for clarity. Janai can understand more than she can say at this point, but it’s hard to always guess where the limits are. Amaya sniffs comically for emphasis.

“Xankar has ordered open the overflow channels just in case.” Janai leans loosely on one elbow as she signs the words she knows along with her speech. Amaya mainly depends on reading her lips, but she appreciates the effort and the desire to practice. “I know a beautiful place to watch it, if you… would like to join me?”

Janai flushes slightly, her hand stuttering when she signs  _ join,  _ either from trying to remember the sign or from being shy about asking, maybe both. She’ll fight to the death without hesitation and she kisses like Amaya’s mouth is the only salvation in a shipwreck, but where physicality comes naturally,  _ words  _ are still a hurdle almost too high to jump, in  _ any  _ language. That she tries anyway is endearing in a way Amaya knows better than to acknowledge openly. 

She is interrupted from nodding back when Janai glances sharply at the door. 

“Someone  _ knocked, _ ” Janai says in response to Amaya’s questioning look, scrambling for her uniform and tossing Amaya’s clothes in her direction. 

Amaya suspects it’s not someone who knows her well, then. That, or it’s not her they’re looking for _.  _ She taps Janai on the shoulder. “OK for  _ you  _ to be  _ here? Now?” _

She  _ should _ know those signs by now.

“I… yes, it’s fine, I just--” Janai stammers, and before Amaya can tell her it’s alright, she frowns at the door again and says something through it, to whoever’s on the other side, her head turned too far for Amaya to tell what. 

At the door, Janai glances back, eyebrows raised in a silent question:  _ can I open it?  _ Amaya brushes her own clothes off, and gives Janai’s uniform a once-over to make sure everything’s on straight before making a universal gesture of  _ go ahead.  _

Frustratingly, Janai is half on the other side of the door for the conversation she has next, giving Amaya  _ still  _ no idea who it is or what they’re saying. She’s getting better with this sort of thing, but she’s still not used to it, and Amaya isn’t sure the type of relationship they have has room for scolding, at least not yet, so there isn’t much she can _ do _ except wait impatiently.

“It’s urgent. My brother.” Janai looks around the edge of the door to say, before signing a quick, “Sorry,” and “Later.”

Between Khessa calling her a  _ pet  _ and King Xankar calling her the  _ little human woman, _ Amaya goes slightly out of her way to avoid any  perception of her as some kind of exotic specimen on a shelf for display or entertainment. When she begins to feel overly predictable, she likes to go exploring without telling anyone where (driving her security detail slightly mad, but some things are worth it.)

The scholars and the priests look askance at her still, affecting only surface-level politeness for the most part, but the soldiers in the lower city seem to know their own, regardless of species. Unexpectedly, those who fought at the border, who were once her direct enemies, are more effusive in their welcome than anyone.

Still, as appealing an option as that is, she’s willing to wait today. Janai’s special storm-watching vantage point is enough of a lure to make her stay put for a little while.

In the end, though, the plan is thwarted, Janai doesn’t return for hours. Amaya watches by herself as the clouds flow bizarrely around the upper city’s column of light, not as dramatic as the last time but still enough of a spectacle to enjoy. 

It’s Gren who shows up as the gray skirts of rain sweep away. He enters her space to one side of the balcony rail in the firm, predictable way of someone announcing their presence, deliberately avoiding sneaking up on her.

Amaya turns to find Janai behind him, a heavy weight on her expression.

“What’s wrong?” She asks, and finds Gren fully in interpreter-mode.

“It’s important and complicated,” Janai explains. “Best to consider this official ambassador business.”

“I’m here,” he signs to her with an  _ I-don’t-know-why-either  _ half-smile. He’s breathing as if he sprinted to get here.

“It’s bad news,” Janai says. “Your _ nephew _ is causing some serious trouble--”

“Ezran?” She assumes first, his power and naivete a recipe for gaffes. 

“The other one.”

“What? What could  _ Callum _ have done?”

“Dark magic, by the sounds of it,” Janai forces out grimly, as though the words themselves are bitter. “Apparently for the second time.”

“Impossible. Why would he do that? You saw him at the Storm Spire. He made a primal link, why would he… I don’t understand.” Amaya is glad for Gren’s presence, aware she’s signing furiously, not at all beginner-friendly.

“I was not given all of the details. Originally they were going to bring you before Xankar to discuss this, I asked for permission to tell you myself.”

“There must be some misunderstanding,” Amaya maintains.

“Amaya, he confessed!” Janai’s expression suggests she’s raising her voice. “There was a trial!”

Amaya sets her jaw and brings one hand up to the opposite shoulder. “Shouldn’t you say  _ general?  _ Or  _ ambassador,  _ if you prefer, if this is  _ official business. _ ”

Janai throws up her hands and starts to turn away. Amaya takes a single long step and grabs her by one shoulder, whirling her back around, feeling the strange, heavy density and growing warmth of her -- she’s getting angry.

“Look at me!” Amaya demands.

For better or worse, Janai complies, an unblinking brown stare with a hard hint of gold beneath.

“What do you want from me?” For all the heat of her body, her face is cold. “I’m only the messenger. And it doesn’t stop there. Can I even tell you the rest, or would you prefer we go to the throne room and let my brother do it?”

With effort, Amaya lets go and takes a step back. Her sister’s voice in her head reminds her to breathe. Her  _ go on, then  _ gesture needs no interpretation. 

Janai explains: “The rumors are causing trouble in Katolis, and word has spread. There is some… unrest. Scyntyllah is going to ask the child Ezran to make a speech denouncing the prince’s actions. Xankar wants  _ you _ to do the same here.”

Amaya raises her eyebrows as far as they’ll go. “Me?”

“I… with him, of course.” She gestures to Gren. “Or perhaps Kazi, for the visual. I’m not sure what’s better, that’s more my brother’s area of expertise. I am a knight, not a politician.”

“How can I say  _ anything _ about this when I still don’t understand what happened? Or if Callum is alright? No--” Amaya works it out as she goes. “I have to go back. If he  _ did  _ do dark magic, something has to be wrong, who knows what condition he’s in? He might need me.”

“You can’t.”

_ “Try and stop me,”  _ Amaya’s hands tear through the air in front of her.

_ “You can’t,”  _ Janai looks almost defeated at having to say it again. “Xankar has ordered you remain in Lux Aurea until the situation is better understood. He has  _ concerns. _ You are still our guest, but you will not be permitted to leave by yourself.”

“That’s ridiculous! Callum is… I’ve seen him move snails out of the road so they don’t get crushed by wagons. He’s as likely to start a  _ dark magic coup _ as he is to grow a second head.”

Janai shakes her head. “What am I meant to do about it? Whatever the truth is, only what Xankar  _ believes _ makes any difference.”

“There has to be more to this than meets the eye. Callum’s lost too much already. I was there when he was born, and I  _ promised  _ to keep him safe, I can’t let him think he’s lost me, too. I know you trust your brother but--”

“That’s just it!” Streaking, glowing veins flash briefly beneath her skin before they fade again. “I  _ don’t  _ trust him!”

“What?”

“I love my brother. Privately, I always thought he’d make the best ruler of the three of us, but--” Janai looks around, as if afraid someone might be listening. How much she lowers her voice, Amaya can’t say, but she intuitively moves closer, implying secrecy. “Since the coronation, he’s… different.”

“Different… how?” Amaya narrows her eyes. She’s met King Xankar a few times, never for more than a few minutes, and has never been able to get a read on what kind of person he is beneath the mask of affability.

“Erratic,” Janai says. “He claims the Lucet have turned their backs on him, believes there are assassination plots, all because he has refused to recall our soldiers from Katolis. Not that it matters, because it’s impossible to have a conversation with him without him changing the topic to our  _ sister.” _

“Khessa.”

Janai walks back inside beneath the arches and sinks into a plush white chair. “You should have heard him. He’s  _ obsessed  _ with her, with how she died. Somehow everything comes back to that.”

“Lord Viren killed her.”

“Did he?” On Janai’s face is a flicker of perhaps the same madness she describes in her brother. “Because there was a survivor of the day, and she claims _that man_ knelt on the floor, silent and still, nearly the entire time, while the phantom of an  _ elf  _ wrought havoc. She swore it before the light itself, and the light showed her true. I admit, I still wonder what he knew about my grandmother.”

“He had many tricks.”

“Xankar is not convinced.”

Amaya drops into a crouch in front of the chair and reaches for Janai, gently shifting her chin so they’re looking at one another again, and Janai allows it.

She lets go so she can sign. 

“Hey. I know you know this isn’t right.”

Janai’s nod is so tiny it’s barely visible at all, but it’s there.

“Let’s work through this, logically,” Amaya decides. “There are a lot of pieces here. Tell me  _ exactly  _ what King Xankar is worried about.”

One word at a time, Janai speaks. “He believes the dragons are not the stable, neutral power widely believed, that there is a…” She draws a deep breath and lets it out, bracing to say, “some  _ conspiracy.  _ He thinks Queen Zubeia and Sol Regem are at odds, and that Zubeia knows more than she is letting on. Once, he suggested she may have  _ arranged  _ all of this turmoil.”

Amaya raises her hands to respond that that’s ridiculous, it’s impossible, but can’t help admitting she cannot truly be certain. 

What does she really know about the queen of the dragons? King Harrow and Lord Viren killed her husband, and stole her baby. Viren led multiple kingdoms of soldiers against her, and only a few humans were on her side. Yet despite being a wife and mother deeply wronged, she did not turn them all to ash in the wind when her baby was returned, but sprung immediately at the chance for peace.

As good as it seems, and as much as she doubts a genuine conspiracy, she supposes Xankar has every right to be  _ confused,  _ especially with that bizarre report of the attack on the nexus.

The idea Amaya actually proposes pops into her head and she dismisses it as ridiculous, but she picks it up, dusts it off, and realizes it’s  _ so  _ ridiculous it’s actually brilliant.

“Let’s ask her. Queen Zubeia, I mean.”

Janai physically recoils. “You cannot possibly believe him? Amaya, I’m telling you, my brother is losing his mind.”

“I trust you.”

“Then what are you saying?” Her eyes narrow in suspicion.

“I’m _ saying _ it sounds like he’d be interested in the result of a  _ bilateral  _ investigation. If I’m there, I’m a  _ human,  _ he can’t possibly say I’m just loyal to the dragons, so the result can’t favor them. If  _ you’re  _ there, you’re his sister and his golden knight, and a Sunfire elf, so he can’t say it’s too  _ harsh  _ on the dragons either. Think about it.” 

Janai scoffs. “He can still say we’re both lying, or that you’ve brainwashed me or--”

_ “--And _ it would get us out of the city.”

“And if my people happened to let their guard down, then  _ you  _ could--” She stops short, as if saying it out loud would jinx it. 

Amaya nods. 

After a moment’s thought, Janai nods back. “It is difficult for me to guess how Xankar will react, but I see no reason not to try. Pack your things and have your men do the same. If he agrees, we leave immediately. I don’t want to give him time to change his mind.”

* * *

Claudia’s most of the way across when the clouds at last begin to part, gray dispersing and leaving behind white cotton buds. The resulting scene is beautiful enough to distract her from her hunger and thirst. 

She’s never had much knack for art, but if she did, she’d like to paint this: the way everything above is reflected on the bridge, turning it into a path of blue sky across the foamy green sea.

As above, so below.  _ This,  _ she suspects, is what it was  _ supposed  _ to look like all along.

“Should have planned for rain,” she mutters to herself, and to whoever created this thing, and to Mue, taking a break from flight on Claudia’s shoulder. 

Distance and time are hard to judge, but as she alights on the soft grayish sand on the island side of the bridge, she’d guess Aaravos and her father are maybe a quarter of an hour behind. She didn’t realize until she saw Aaravos supporting him that it was _that_ bad of a day, and even if she ought to be sympathetic, she’s more angry that he tried to hide it from her. 

So  _ proud _ of her, he said at the battle, so _ appreciative  _ that she stuck by him, as if she would have done anything else, but if that’s true, he’s not exactly holding up his end of the bargain. Twice now he’s agreed to be more straightforward, to treat her like the adult she needs to be to do her part in keeping all of them alive, and he’s  _ still  _ letting pride get in the way of breaking old, protective, egotistical habits. 

Claudia never met her paternal grandfather, he died before she was born, but when asked, dad described him as insufferably exacting and rigid, obsessed with his own image and the image of the family. Can dad see he’s headed the same way? 

It’s hard to imagine just  _ turning into your parents  _ without noticing it happening. For all that she admires his resolve and his accomplishments, she hopes she’s able to be mindful about what  _ else _ she takes on. 

Then again, dad must have felt the same thing at her age. Does everyone think like that, and wind up trapped by their own blood anyway?

On the bright side, the weather is milder now, the breeze lacking the bite it had before. She can see the continental coastline off at the other side of the bridge, though the image shifts and warps, as if through a soap bubble. The beach here is in the shape of an eye, bordered by a wood full of evergreens larger than any vegetation she’s ever seen in her life. They’re the kind of giants she’s only ever read about in history books. 

Are they magical? They must be, surely, to reach such a size. 

In her peripheral vision, something moves just at the edge of where the trees stop their march to the sea. 

_ Whoa.  _

This is also something she’s only ever heard about in stories, and never seen, even on their trek through Xadia. One of Sir Phineas Kirst’s diaries had a drawing in it, and though his sketches are widely presumed to be exaggerated (considering the way he represented himself, after all) this thing is  _ exactly  _ like his image of what he called a  _ battle-bird.  _

If she didn’t already know it was a bird, she wouldn’t be sure it was one at all. It has the fluffy, rounded body of a fattened turkey, if the turkey also had bizarrely long legs, and entirely different coloring -- ruffles of feather as black and glossy as Mue’s, and a bright blue-skinned neck and head. 

According to Kirst, the bird got its name for being extremely aggressive and attacking him, though most things seemed to attack him, based on his journals. 

She watches it, and it watches her, and then it vanishes behind one of many massive tree-trunks. 

Water is the first thing they’ll have to find, and it’s not going to be  _ here,  _ so she walks up the beach and takes a few steps into the woods -- not far enough that Aaravos and dad will lose sight of her now they’re close, just enough to get a sense of things. The battle-bird must drink  _ something,  _ right? 

Probably not just  _ the blood of whatever it battles with.  _

Right?

Fortunately, she doesn’t have to think too hard about it, because there’s a creek visible from just inside the treeline, flowing with clear, cold water. The moment Aaravos helps her father to the shore, she beckons them to it, and they rest in silence among the moss and clover. 

Things whistle and rattle to one another in the trees, songs she hasn’t heard before. Mue sticks close. Ravens, mom always said, are naturally cautious. 

“Did you know about this?” She asks Aaravos. “The island?”

“No,” he answers simply, ears back, and she decides to believe him. 

When they’re ready to move on, they follow a rough path curving to the left of the hill -- no one has to say it’s roughly the size of a path a human would make. They’re all thinking it, all alert. Claudia carries the eclipse stone, ready to create a shadow forcefield the way she did in the battle, demanding as it would be without the mediation of the staff. 

The curve is gentle and slow, and when it bends back, Aaravos makes some offhand comment about the shape of an almond, or an eye. 

Sand mixes with soil on the path when she hears it: A wail of obvious distress. 

“Did you hear that?”

She half-expects Aaravos’  _ no,  _ but not her father’s. 

“Really!?” Claudia makes a frustrated growl in her throat.

She breaks away again into a dash toward the noise when it repeats, a broken cry interspersed with a rasping  _ heeelp!  _ It sounds now like it might be the voice of a young man, but it’s hard to be sure. Whoever it is, their distress is  _ palpable.  _ There are limited spells at her disposal with the stone by itself, unless she can find familiar components, but she’s going to do her best. 

The trees stop, and the cry continues. Claudia runs, hampered by sand and bits of coral. 

So: this is the other side of the island. Off to the west, the trees curve back in the other direction, a mirror of the beach she appeared on, and the sun is creeping down the sky toward the horizon. They’ve been walking, and resting, and walking for most of the day. Behind her, through the impossibly-wide tree-trunks, she can get a flash of Aaravos making chase, trailed by her father.

Serves him right for not saying anything about his leg.

On the beach, there is a door. 

To Claudia, it looks like any interior door in Katolis castle, wooden and heavy and a little askew, sitting in a stone frame. 

It floats about a foot off the ground, which is... unusual.

There’s no time to worry about that, though, because it’s open just a little, just a crack, a void of darkness beyond it which is unquestionably the source of the screaming. Whatever that is, someone inside is in trouble, and as insane as it is, she doesn’t think she could live with herself if she did nothing.

“Claudia stop!” Viren calls, from the edge of where the beach begins. “What are you doing?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing!?” Her voice cracks when she shouts back at him. “Someone in there needs help!”

“In where!?” He calls back. 

Claudia gestures to the door. 

“The door?”

“Where else!?”

After a quick, tense back and forth, she establishes Aaravos sees nothing at all, just a plain beach, and her father sees the door, but believes it is closed when it is obviously,  _ clearly  _ open just enough that she could wedge her foot in there. 

“Maybe this is what it was all about!” She says. “Maybe we have to save someone! Maybe they’ve been trying to get help all this time!”

“Or maybe not!” Says her father in an impatient splutter. “We didn’t even know this  _ landmass  _ existed twelve hours ago, I think it’s reasonable to exercise a little  _ caution--” _

“Great,” she says. _ “You _ exercise caution. Exercise all the caution you want. I’m going in there before it shuts for real.”

With that said, she has thrown her cap over the wall. Despite her outward confidence, doubt curls at the base of her throat. She hikes her over-skirt, steps over the bottom edge of the door, and listens in the darkness as it slams predictably shut behind her.

* * *

“Do you hear something?” Soren asks. It started just across the bridge, and he thought it was the lava, or maybe ringing in his ears, but it hasn’t stopped.

“Sir?” Asks one of the Sunfire soldiers. “What do you mean, hear something?”

“Like a…” Soren frowns. “Do you guys have cicadas in Xadia?” 

_ Xicadias,  _ Soren jokes to himself. 

The two Sunfire elves look at one another, and then at Soren, and shrug. 

Maybe they call them something else. He doesn’t press it, not wanting to seem  _ weird,  _ but he can’t help looking around whenever they’re not watching him. 

The less he says, the less the chance he’ll put his foot in his mouth and give himself away, so Soren mostly keeps his mouth shut and focuses on carrying himself kind of like dad used to, in that way that made everyone around him feel like they were being assessed at all times. (Or was that only Soren? No, it couldn’t have been.) It seems to be working, more or less, because one of the elves has already gone ahead to “prepare” things, and the other two are openly nervous.

He wishes he could just tell them to relax and go about their day.  _ Hey guys, you don’t want to do this, I don’t want to do this, let’s just go our separate ways and pretend we never ran into each other to begin with.  _

If only. 

They take him through the main building of Doctrina Limen -- a large dining hall, a mezzanine, some small rooms filled with tables and books, and one that’s empty except for a circle of chairs.

In one room, a human is at the front, silently watching others at little desks reading books and taking notes. He’d expected an elf, for some reason, but aside from the elves escorting him, there don’t seem to be any here at all.

Residents in the other spaces go about their business placidly: doing chores, studying, monitoring one another, carrying blank, hard-backed notebooks like the ones Dad used to buy for his journals, and so they can walk and take notes at the same time. There’s an air of severity to it, but it reminds him more of a monastery than a jail, especially with all the shaved heads. That’s good, right?

The dormitories are unsettlingly public, like military trainee bunkhouses and just as spotlessly clean, the beds perfectly tidy, the sparse belongings the only indication anyone lives here at all.

It’s spare, but also not exactly a torture chamber.

The initial blandness of it all only makes it more bizarre, what starts to come up when he scratches the surface.

“I wish we could tell you more details,” says Vif, “but I don’t actually work inside the facility, as you know--”

“Who does?” Soren asks. 

“What do you mean?”

“Well, aren’t you going to introduce me to a… headmaster, or something? Who’s running the place?”

“Oh. Well, the humans, sir. They manage themselves, as you can see.” She points at a shy woman with short hair and a notebook, by way of example, talking about her as though she isn’t even there. “As they progress up through the ranks, they get authority over the lower ones.”

Soren recognizes her, despite how different she looks now. 

She came through the trials shortly after they started. The last time he saw her, she was dressed in magenta robes, and her hair went all the way down her back, a mess from her fight with the agents. When she was allowed to tell her side of the story, she called every one of them names that made even Soren blush, tried to spit on the guards, and swore if she was imprisoned, her apprentices would avenge her.

There are dark circles under her eyes, now. By the way she goes a little green at the sight of him, it seems like she recognizes Soren too. 

“You there,” he says. He can’t remember her name. “What are you writing?”

“Behavior and work reports, sir.” She keeps her eyes downcast, her back straight, and her tone even and soft.

“Can I see them?” 

“Of course, sir,” she says deferentially, passing the book to him with both hands.

The whole thing raises the hairs on the back of his neck. 

The writing is difficult to understand at first. There are a lot of words Soren knows out of context, but that don’t make sense in the situation.  _ Links,  _ for example, and  _ impurities,  _ and any number of incomprehensible bits of shorthand repeated again and again. 

Can he ask what they mean, or would he be expected to already know?

The  _ notes  _ column is at least a little clearer than the rest of the chart.

> _ Drethan: Eye contact with Silma. Same order. Planning to conspire? _
> 
> _ Ricke: Slouching at breakfast. Poor attitude. Sub-standard cleaning.  _
> 
> _ Lea: Humming during bridge-building. Return to MQ? _

Soren’s eyes skip down to find more of the same. He can draw a connection that the list is  _ bad _ , some items being obvious -- suspected of trying to escape, that kind of thing -- but with some of them, he’s not entirely sure  _ why  _ they’re bad. What’s so awful about humming? 

“Do you… like it here?” He asks her.

As much as she was already an example of good posture, she stands up a little straighter. Still, she doesn’t look him in the eye. 

“I accept this charity with a grateful heart,” she says, without any expression on her face that he can make out. 

“Yeah, okay,” Soren says, because that doesn’t answer his question, “but are you--”

What is he going to ask? Are you happy? It’s not meant to be a day at the beach, but it isn’t supposed to be cruel and unusual either, and he has no idea how to ask someone who lives in the middle of it whether it’s  _ a-little-difficult-but-still-humane-enough. _

“What has it been like?” He ultimately asks. It comes out too normal, more like himself than his Deputy Minister of Justice persona, because this isn’t who  _ or  _ what he wants to be asking and that’s what’s on his mind. Hopefully no one notices. 

“Sir, while I initially struggled with the transition, I am growing and learning each day, by virtue of the beneficence of Doctrina Limen. I have come to understand that only through this gift can I be redeemed.” She’s still not looking at him, though her eyes do flick in his direction for a moment when she adds, “I know I still have a long way to go.”

The change from before is eerie, to say the least. It’s almost  _ creepier  _ than an actual prison would be, if he thinks about it. What was done to her to make her like this?

He passes back the documents. As much as he just wants to make an excuse to the two Sunfire elves and get out of here, get on with finding Claudia, that feeling of  _ owing something _ is a wave that went out to sea and is now crashing back.

“I hope everything is to your satisfaction,” says Vif. 

“Satisfaction. Yes. Well. I was hoping to…” This is so stupid. This is  _ so  _ stupid, but here he goes anyway. “That is, part of my inspection plan is to... interview... a resident. In private. It’s meant to be completely confidential. To inspire... honesty.”

Soren wants to sink into the floor. He wanted that to come out strong and nonchalant, and it sounded  _ exactly  _ like someone making something up instead. The Sunfire elves may be a little obtuse at times about human mannerisms, but there’s no way they missed this one. 

Vif looks at her lieutenant and a silent conversation passes between them. Soren braces for this all to fall apart, but when the moment ends, they both seem strangely  _ relieved,  _ as if they’ve found the key piece of a puzzle, and now it _ finally _ makes sense.

“Yes, sir, of course. Did you have anyone in particular in mind? Or is there a…” Vif searches for a word with a little half-smile on her face. Tactfully, she selects, “...a  _ profile? _ ”

_ Wha _ -oh. Eugh. Okay, not  _ at all _ what he was going for. Is that a human stereotype, or a more personal misunderstanding? He’s not sure which is worse. Better not to dwell. If they’re drawing _ this  _ conclusion, they’re not suspecting the truth, which is all that matters. It might even make this next part easier, no matter how slimy it feels.

“There was a trial, awhile ago. Name of Raum. About twenty years old, uh… dark brownish-reddish curlyish hair? Yea high, kind of gravelly sounding?”

They just stare at him. 

“Missing most of his left arm?” 

“Oh!” Says Vif.  _ “Him.  _ The…  _ you know.” _

Soren frowns, trying to decode what she’s not saying, and Vif completely misinterprets it. 

“A thing like that, you know how rumor travels,” she says, as if this explains anything. “Anyway, certainly, sir, where would you like us to bring him? For the... _ interview?” _

The way she says it makes Soren feel like someone’s dropped a slug down the back of his shirt, but he resists the shudder and glances up at the mezzanine. “There,” he says, pointing to the plain little room with the circle of chairs, currently not in use. “I’ll be waiting in there.”

They salute him, and go off in search of Raum, talking softly among themselves, more relaxed now that they see this as a _secret favor_ rather than anything genuinely official. On the other side of the catwalk, the room is small and quiet and smells of cut wood. He tries to think about what he’s going to say, but he’s distracted again by that noise. 

It doesn’t  _ quite  _ sound like cicadas, exactly. It’s more steady, and there’s a resonance to it, like if the cicadas were inside a drum? But that doesn’t make any sense. Maybe it’s more like a grindstone with a sword on it?

Stranger is the way it doesn’t seem to be coming _ from _ anywhere in particular, no louder or quieter in here than outside. Though, when he turns  _ this  _ way, it takes on a different feel… somehow  _ inviting-- _

Like what Claudia asked him about on the march into Xadia. 

Or what Callum mentioned at the party at the Storm Spire. 

He _ didn’t  _ hear it then, he’s sure. Absolutely positive. Almost.

There’s no time to give it more thought, because the door opens, Raum is shoved roughly through it, and it closes again, leaving them alone in a room that suddenly has no air in it. 

Say something.  _ Say something.  _ Soren  _ commands  _ himself to say something, anything, but his mouth is uninterested in complying. 

So, Raum, despite looking down into the dusty corner rather than meeting his eyes, beats him to it. 

“Hello, Soren.”

“I… hi. Look. I, um--I’m--”  _ Come on, try to focus.  _ Soren’s not twelve anymore, and he’s supposed to be the one in charge here. Bad enough he can’t pull off  _ in charge  _ to save his life right now, the least he can do is be coherent. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t understand.” Raum actually looks at him, eyes narrow, and Soren can’t help but look back at them: like marmalade, like little candle-flames. There’s something hollow about him, and not only how thin he is now.

He is stock-still, appraising, incredibly cautious, as though Soren is a predator that can’t see him if he doesn’t move. At least he’s not calling him  _ sir.  _ Soren’s not sure he could hear that and keep his breakfast down. 

“I mean, are you okay? I haven’t been here before. All I knew was what they were telling me, and it’s not exactly that they  _ lied,  _ I guess, it’s just… I don’t know.” Soren stops pacing. He didn’t even realize he  _ was  _ pacing. He wishes there was a desk or a table or something between them, that they weren’t just  _ standing there.  _ It’s too vulnerable _.  _ “This is hard to say. I didn’t really understand, before, and I think I didn’t want to understand, and even after looking around here, I’m pretty sure I  _ still  _ don’t. But I’m worried. I just want to know if you’re okay.” Hastily, he adds, “If you’re  _ all _ okay.”

_ But mostly you, which isn’t fair to everyone else here, but that’s just how it is.  _

Raum does that scrutinizing expression that always makes Soren feel like a dead butterfly pinned to a velvet case. It’s hard to say he  _ laughs,  _ exactly, just a quick exhale through his nose. His mouth doesn’t even move.

“Why me?”

“What do you mean, why you? We used to be… you know, friends. Or whatever” Soren wishes he didn’t sound so defensive. “I figured, if there’s anybody in this place I could actually  _ talk  _ to--”

“Everything is fine.” A flash of ice is on Raum’s face, an expression intensely schooled into neutrality. “It is truly generous of the Ministry of Justice to provide this opportunity. I accept this charity with a grateful heart.” 

Thumb, index, middle, ring, pinky. Thumb, index, middle, ring, pinky. The fingers of Raum’s remaining hand tap a tiny rhythm against his leg, and he breathes in time with it.

“C’mon, man, relax,” Soren appeals. “There’s no one else here. You can tell me what’s really up this time, I won’t say anything to anyone. In fact, you can even tell me what to tell them, after. I’m uh… pretty good at sticking to a script. Promise.”

“By virtue of the beneficence of--”

“Stop it!” Soren shouts, realizes he shouted, and lowers his voice. “Just… stop. I’m telling you, you can talk to me! I’ll prove it. I’ll go first.” Words flood from him. “I’m on the run right now, because I did dark magic, because my parents are dead and I think everything’s gone hinky and I think Claudia is alive and I want to go and find her. I’m only  _ here _ ‘cause I needed an excuse when I ran into those guys out there. As soon as this is over, I’m fleeing into Xadia, and I had them track  _ you _ down so I could offer to take you with me.”

“You... did dark magic?” Raum actually looks up, makes eye contact once more, thank  _ goodness.  _

“Yeah.” Soren’s not sure if he should look ashamed or defiant, and he’s pretty sure he ends up with some unattractive combination of the two. 

At some point during that little confession, he somehow got close enough to smell sweat and lye soap and something else, something painfully nostalgic, something that smells like climbing a tree in the middle of the night (Raum was always so good at climbing trees) and talking in the dark safety of the branches about nothing and everything, sneaking back home with the first whistle-calls of the blackbirds.

“And you want me to leave here with you?”

“Yeah! I don’t exactly have a plan, but I  _ am  _ on kind of a roll, sneaking-around-wise. If you don’t want to talk now ‘cause… I don’t know, you think someone’s listening, or something, it’s fine.” He gestures at the outer wall, where a window would be, if this were a different kind of place. “Just come  _ with  _ me and you can tell me  _ out there.” _

Raum looks down at the floor. He swallows, his eyebrows twitch. Under his breath, he mutters,  _ “Thought it’d be more subtle than this.” _

When he looks up, Soren could swear for a second that he sees the beginnings of tears quickly blinked away. 

“I want to complete the program, Soren. Only by…” He stops in the middle of his sentence, shakes his head, and then goes on. “Only by reaching order ten can I be sure I’m able to live in the new world. This is my journey.”

Soren drags one of the chairs out of the circle and sits down, rubbing his face with his hands, trying to figure out how to  _ reach  _ him. 

“Am I dismissed?” Raum asks. 

“I’m sorry, man,” Soren says, and now  _ he’s  _ the one having a hard time with eye contact.  _ Am I dismissed.  _ It should never have been like this. “I’m so sorry. I really screwed this up, I should never have let you end up here, and now I can’t fix it, and I’m just… sorry.”

That’s not an answer, and Raum stares at him, waiting.

“Yeah, sure, you want to be dismissed, or whatever, you are. Least I can do is not make you stand here and listen to my pity party. I mean look at you. Not like I have any right to complain. I’m just…” Soren examines a little piece of volcanic pebble on the floor. “I’m getting tired. Really tired, and I’ve only just  _ started _ .”

_ I miss you,  _ doesn’t make it out of his mouth.

Raum turns to go, puts his hand on the doorknob, and stops.

“Soren--” Raum says, with more humanity in that one word than in everything he’s said so far, turning back around.

“Yeah?” 

“Whether or not you’re--that is, I don’t think I can get in any trouble if I say--” 

Soren sits up straighter. “What is it?”

“ _ I’m  _ sorry, I never came back to see you, after everything.” He glances down at the space where his left forearm isn’t. “I think a lot of things might have been different.”

In Soren’s imagination, he crosses the room and takes Raum’s hand and the second they touch, whatever spell he’s under is broken and Soren says  _ I missed you, I was a idiot and a coward and Claudia made fun of me for months and she was right, I should have gone to see you at the farm, it was my fault not yours, and I’m getting you out of here, no matter what it takes.  _

In reality, he says, “No worries,” and makes a halfhearted wave of dismissal.

Raum hesitates. “You remember the time we found those baby rabbits in a tree stump? And we kept meeting up to watch them as they grew up?”

“What?” 

“Do you remember how many rabbits there were? ‘Cause I… think I’ve forgotten.”

“Rabb--no, man, we never--what are you talking about? Those weren’t rabbits, they were raccoons. Three of them. Remember? We named them...” Soren actually lets himself laugh. “I think it was… snoot, squeak, and uh… spooky. The albino one. ‘Cause it looked like a ghost. You… don’t remember?”

“Shit, shit, you  _ are  _ real,” Raum says, breathlessly shoving one of the chairs out of the way in his rush to the middle of the room, where he falls into a crouch in front of Soren’s chair and touches him, touches his shoulder, grasping at it. “Right? I swear if this is another illusion--”

“A what?” Soren pulls back. 

“I’ll explain later. If you’re serious about taking me with you, we shouldn’t waste any time.”

“Wait, really? You’re...” Soren looks around, all of the sudden paranoid that  _ he’s  _ the one under the magnifying glass. “You really want to do this?”

The change is so quick and dramatic he's got whiplash.

Raum visibly struggles with himself, but he nods. “How?”

“I have a _ little  _ bit of an idea, but I don’t know if you’re gonna like it.” Soren, at least, is  _not_ going to like explaining what the elves think is going on. Still, playing to that somehow is the only way out, isn’t it? Let them think he’s the creepy, corrupt, easy-to-blackmail human they imagine he is, and by the time anyone who matters hears the story, the two of them will be long gone.

“Wait. There’s one condition,” Raum says. It’s like he’s been injected with color, like he took his own spirit off a hanger in a closet and slipped it back on. 

“What’s that?” He just barely stops himself from saying  _ anything.  _

Raum will not risk being overheard. He whispers directly into Soren’s ear:

“Promise me we’ll come back here and burn this place to the ground.”

* * *

The door is shut. 

For the first time since he crossed into Xadia, Viren’s mind is quiet. 

He reaches for the sound, like a fish that misses the hook, but it’s all around him now. He can’t hear it because he’s inside it.

To Viren, the door has been shut since before he even saw it. He came around the trunk of a colossal evergreen, disturbing little birds into a collective angry song among the canopy far above. The moment he realized the dark shape against the sky and the sea was a door, he also knew it was shut to him, he just knew, as though it had a sign on it, as though it spoke to him. 

He tries anyway, because of course he does. Claudia is long gone through it, apparently seeing it as open, or able to open it. Open, closed, it hardly matters now what disagreement they had five minutes ago, because now it is firmly closed and locked. Mue circles above it, screeching.

Still, he tries. He grabs the knob and the knocker and he pulls. The sand gives him no leverage at all, and the knob doesn’t move, and the door doesn’t budge even the littlest bit. It doesn’t matter if he knows it’s locked, his daughter is in there. He has to try. He has to, until he can’t, until he collapses in the gray-silver sand, among jagged chunks of pink coral, scattering little crabs that carry their houses on their backs. 

Aaravos sits beside him. 

“What does it look like?” Viren asks, staring at the door. “To you?”

Aaravos laughs. “Like you’re insane.”

Viren feels his cheeks redden. Brusquely, he asks, “Nothing? You don’t see  _ anything?” _

“Now? No. When you touched it, there was a… flash.” He looks out at the sea, beginning to take on the colors of the coming sunset. Slowly, he considers, “I get the sense I don’t exactly belong here.”

“When has _that_ stopped you?”

“A fair point.”

“You’ve truly  never heard of this place?” Viren wonders. It’s bizarre, a creature as old and storied as Aaravos, who seems to have tales of practically every corner of the continent, would be as lost as he is.

“Never.” Aaravos’ ears twitch. “It’s… refreshing. It’s been a long, long time since I saw something truly  _ new.” _

Something rustles in the brush among the trunks, and Viren twists to see another one of those big flightless birds that have been following them since they set out on the path, watching from around the edge of a tree. At the other side, another blue avian face, and a third from behind a different trunk altogether. 

_ Battle-birds,  _ Claudia called them. Viren’s never been a fan of Kirst, his writings being apocryphal at best most of the time, but Claudia seems to enjoy them. It occurs to him that she took the eclipse stone, and while the walk has loosened the pain in his leg a little, and it’s much better than it was when he woke, he’d still be essentially helpless if they decided to live up to their name.

He nudges Aaravos out of his ocean-watching and nods toward the birds, right at the moment a brown hand lands softly on one of their heads, the same kind of gesture one might use to pet a dog that’s done its job well. 

Aaravos’ eyes must be keener than Viren’s, because they narrow, and he mouths silently, pointing to his hand:

_ “Five... fingers.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick added note: The birds on the island are basically cassowaries, for anyone who didn't recognize the description.


	16. Book Five: Star | Chapter Seven: Apsides

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”_   
>  **― T.S. Eliot**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New longest chapter!

**Book Five: Star**

**Chapter 7: Apsides**

**(Or: A Funny Thing Happened on the Night of the Full Moon)**

* * *

_Long ago, Xadia was one land._

_In the beginning, the primal sources made the world from themselves. For what would live in it, they planned to work together. The resulting creature, they thought, would be connected not to one of them, but to all of them, and they would each contribute something._

**_Sky_ ** _gave the creature hands and feet, for moving widely and wildly, caressing, dancing, striking, picking things up and moving them about, just like the wind itself._

 **_Ocean_ ** _gave it blood, to carry nutrients and energy from place to place, always folding and changing and cycling, like the water itself._

 **_Earth_ ** _gave it a belly, where matter could be changed and transmuted into energy, and also where new life is made, the same as the ground._

 **_Sun_ ** _gave it muscles, to generate warmth and strength, giving power and agency and rhythm, the ability to effect change in the surroundings, just as the sunlight does._

 **_Moon_ ** _gave it skin, an outside to be shown and seen, shining, displayed, always renewing itself, to conceal what lies within, in the same way as the moonlight._

 **_Stars_ ** _gave it senses, so that it could watch, listen, record, monitor, learn, and remember, like the stars above._

_However, as they worked on the creature, they began to argue about the importance of each of their roles. As it turned out, each one secretly thought themselves the most critical member, and were deeply offended to hear that their fellow sources did not agree!_

_In the end, they were unable to set aside their differences, and_ abandoned _the thing, severed it from each one of them, so it was connected to nothing, and hid it away. Instead, they said, they would each create their own, and present the best creatures to be touched by Core, who would give them spirits to send their creations into the world._

 **_Core,_ ** _the seventh source, knew nothing of the physical world and so was not invited to participate._

 _Of course, each of them had learned everything they knew of life from that first effort, so each work, while unique in some ways, still had quite a lot in common. These they called_ elves.

 _When they saw one another’s creations, they realized just how much they’d borrowed from one another and from their first attempt. After that, all six sources began to create more and more outlandish things: plants and animals with unexpected features and abilities to prove their unique creative genius and show that_ they _were the one who should receive spirits from Core for the life they had made._

_Finally, they said, “we have had so much practice in making wonderful things, let us all try to make the most beautiful and powerful thing we can, a true masterpiece. The winner will have their creations given life in the world.”_

_These were the_ dragons.

_As anyone might guess, however, when it came time to vote on whose would be presented to Core, each source voted only for their own dragons, so they turned to Core to break the tie and decide for herself whose were best._

_Core, however, did not_ only _examine their final work, their dragons, but_ all _the things they had made, from dragons and elves to animals, insects, and plants. She had no interest in the rules they had made up for themselves. She was so delighted by each and every one that she gave spirits to them_ all, _and sent them all into the world._

 _Even the few plants and animals rejected by their creators were lovely to her, and she gave spirits to them as well, even if they would have no primal link. Their spirits could always come home to her. After all,_ everything _would, eventually._

_Just when she thought she was finished, when the world was already full of life, she felt the presence of something hidden. The last thing she found was the first thing they’d made, their forgotten first creature._

_“What’s this?” She asked. “Who made it?”_

_“It’s nothing,” they replied, about their strange collaboration, no one able to claim it. “It belongs to no one, it was a first attempt, ignore it.”_

_“I love it,” she said. “May I have it?”_

_For all their power, Sky, Ocean, Earth, Sun, Moon and even Stars were all afraid of Core. They knew her true name: annihilation. When a spirit returned to its source, it could be reused, reincarnated into a new body, so its death was not a true end. Sometimes, though, Core would take a spirit instead, on a rhythm and schedule known only to her, and there was nothing for it._

_She frightened them, the same way that maggots and brush-fires discomfited the living creatures they had made, symbols of unmaking. Just as decomposition in their physical world enabled new growth, however, there would be no_ spirit _without Core for very long. They could hate and fear her all they wanted, it wouldn’t make her any less necessary._

_There was no saying no to her. They had made waste, and she would recycle it, as was her wont._

_So they said yes, and she took the creature and its design for her own._

_She called them humans, and loved them like children, and their spirits would always return to her alone, which made them different: their essence would always be new, never a reincarnation._

_With her love, she gave them the freedom to choose their own purpose, but also a way to help themselves, and her, if they so desired, an innate potential, an understanding of herself:_

_The Seventh Arcanum._

**~Manawa Creation Myth**

* * *

Viren is on his feet in the sand, wincing at the protests of his knee when he changes position, braced for movement, but with no idea what kind. He’s got nothing on hand to fight with but his own arms and legs, and nowhere to run but into the sea. Whoever this is, all he can do is hope they’re not hostile. Next to him, Aaravos is slower to stand, moving in a controlled, careful way as if trying not to startle a wary animal.

Around the bend of the trunk, she appears: a woman whose bearing and riotous cloud of graying hair give the impression that she’s someone’s grandmother. She is soft at the edges, shrouded in a cloak the color of eiderdown feathers with mushrooms embroidered along the hem, and leaning on a black cane with a flare at the bottom.

On her face are the unmistakable marks of dark magic.

Viren’s never been ashamed of his own scars, exactly, but it isn’t hard to see the value in covering them. He rather liked Sigrin’s, once upon a time, the gray on her complexion recalling calacatta stone, where his own seemed almost like bruises eventually. This strange woman looks wholly different to either of them, however, her patterns the color that freckles would be, symmetrical, organic, and warm.

Those bulbous, flightless birds on long legs shift their heads curiously from side to side, closing in around her like bodyguards.

“You choose a cold night to visit the island of Manawa!” She calls across the little dune, covered in wood sorrel, that separates forest from beach. Her steps are mindful and stiff as she approaches. The accent is unfamiliar, her cadence odd and musical. 

So, the place has a name, though it’s still one he’s never heard before. 

Mue appears from nowhere (or rather, from one of a million branches in the woods nearby.) She slices between Viren and the woman in a harsh dive, and then banks away on a breeze, back into the canopy with a warning shriek.

“Worry not!” The woman calls back. “I mean your humans no harm!”

“Likewise, I hope,” Viren is quick to say, eyeing the battle-birds warily. 

“Goodness, there _is_ an elf!” She turns to the birds and adds, “Alright, I apologize, you were right, I was wrong.”

The nearest battle-bird grumbles in its throat.

“In _credible!”_ She hurries closer, speaking as though she’s just made some great scientific discovery, and regarding Aaravos accordingly, as a specimen. “I’ve never _seen_ a real live elf. The bridge held you? Fascinating. It isn’t meant to. You’ll _have_ to explain how you _managed._ Is it insensitive to say you resemble the old sketches in our library of Archmage Aaravos? I don’t meant to imply you all look the same, of course--”

“Not at all.” Aaravos says, smiling despite the way she makes his name sound more like _araviss_ . With barely-restrained glee he leans to cover more than a foot of distance between his height and hers, implying uncomfortable intimacy with a total stranger, as always. “That _is_ who I am.”

“Hm!” She says, her tone inscrutable, her sun-bleached eyebrows furrowed. She gestures to him, in a general sense, clearly able to see or feel something invisible. “Well, I’ll be. Your magic is... what, blocked? Cut off? Something happen to you?”

“A _regrettable_ situation,” Aaravos summarizes.

“Bit of a relief, anyway. I _was_ concerned for a moment, all things considered.”

“All... things?” Viren questions, on the back foot.

“Well,” she rasps a laugh, “An elf and a man are one thing, an elf and a man backed by dragons’d be something much different. If the stories are even a _little_ true, I don’t exactly have to worry about _that_ with _him_.”

Aaravos is almost _preening,_ magic or no magic, unable to disguise his delight at being recognized, seen, known.

“No,” Viren understands. “Certainly not.”

“And you!” She turns her probing gaze on Viren “Goodness, you’ve been through it, haven’t you?”

“Excuse--”

“May I?”

She reaches up to touch him, and he tenses, but allows it. The brush of her fingers on his cheek is brief and clinical, and a reminder of just how much his beard has taken over his face while they’ve traveled, how scruffy he’s become. Viren can feel the tingle in his cheeks and brow, his skin tight as his own scars flash across him, just as when the Sunfire elves turned their light on him, if less painful. 

“ _Oh._ You’ve done great deeds, that much I can tell.” Her voice is a little softer, all of the sudden. “I suppose I should tell you _welcome home.”_

“Home?” The word slips out through Viren’s mouth as if foreign. 

From her appearance and behavior, he can deduce that this is some kind human sanctuary, lost long enough even for Aaravos not to know it, and he is heartened by what seems like a welcoming acceptance of dark magic, but every conclusion he arrives at only inspires more questions.

“You had another with you? The one who went into the nexus? My runners tell me _someone_ did.”

Runners. That must be what she calls the fluffy birds with the big clawed feet, though Viren doesn’t doubt they could exemplify their other name if he or Aaravos made a wrong move.

“I... don’t believe we got your name?” Viren presses, covering his unease beneath a veil of stiff manners. 

“Names! Yes. Of course. I'm Eywesh -- that’s short for Mohlieywesh, of South New-Sedj, up the west side of the eye. Yours?”

“Viren, of--” He stops, makes a choice, and lets out a toxic cloud of emotion in a grumble-voiced sigh. “Of nowhere, anymore. To the point, it was my _daughter_ that went through the door. Perhaps you can at least tell me if she’s in danger?”

Eywesh looks at the door, and back at Viren. 

“How old?”

Viren tamps down rising frustration. “What does her age matter? If you know where she went, then _explain._ ”

“I'm not trying to condescend to you. I don’t know where to begin, what you already know, what you don’t know.”

 _“Everyth_ \--” It comes out in a frustrated half-growl. He stops himself, and continues in a measured, deliberate tone: “I think we may be talking past each other. _None_ of us knew this island or _that door_ existed at all until hours ago. We felt a… a pull, to come this way.”

“You mean to say you didn’t know the _Core Nexus_ existed at all? Either of you?” There is bewilderment in the lines on her face as she glances back and forth between Viren and Aaravos.

“I…” Aaravos frowns. “I _suspected_ that there _could_ be a seventh source underlying human magic, once, but I dismissed those ideas centuries ago. Surely it would have been _found,_ I thought.”

Viren nods along, though this is the first Aaravos has told him of the theory. He himself once _daydreamed_ of such a thing, a discovery even the elves and dragons couldn’t besmirch, proof his people belonged in their homeland once and for all, that they weren’t just pests to be tolerated, or not. It never seemed it could be anything more than a wish.

“Only six? But _you_ \--you have the marks of core magic, the Core’s purpose is alive within you. _How_ did you think you did magic?” Eywesh’s curious confidence is slightly shaken as she struggles to resolve this new information. In response to Aaravos and Viren’s equally bewildered faces, she leans heavily on her cane. “Okay. _Okay._ That explains your worry. Is she adolescent? At least, between around… nine and twenty four?”

Viren’s ears ring. “Seventeen, a few months ago.”

“Probably safe, then.”

 _“Probably!?”_ Viren’s spine turns to ice. 

“Probably.” Eywesh shrugs, leaning away in defense. “I don’t know her, but every child of magic on Manawa enters the nexus when they’re called to, somewhere in that range, seventeen’s quite normal. Once they return, if they return--”

Viren repeats the _if_ under his breath, one hand balled at his side. _If,_ she says. 

_“If_ they return, we consider that they have come of age. It’s completely ordinary. I won't lie. Not all return. Some festivals celebrate the past rather than the future, but to rejoin the Core is no tragedy.”

Viren is still stuck on _if not._ “What is _happening_ to her?”

“Come back to the village,” offers Eywesh, “Both of you. My runner friends will tell us when she emerges. The world may be moving on, but times will have to be a lot harder before we abandon hospitality. You must be tired, and hungry.”

“What does that matter!?” Viren shouts, a firework of worries from his mouth.

The silence afterward is just as loud. No one blinks. Aaravos too is frozen, sizing up the field. The battle-birds, or runners, whatever they are, begin to make a growl so low it is barely audible at all, and the one nearest to Eywesh puffs up its jewel-blue cheeks in an expression of obvious hostility. 

“Alright then,” she says, placing her hand on the bird’s back reassuringly, but not taking her eyes off Viren. 

“I _have_ to wait for her,” he clarifies, quieter, but still acidic. “Surely you can understand.”

“You’re afraid,” she ventures. By way of explanation, she says, “I have children.”

“Yes,” Viren admits, because it is easier to agree than to say the words himself, and he hopes that the confession takes a little of the sting out of his outburst. 

“Suit yourself,” says Eywesh, demeanor turning a little cooler, a little more cautious.

“Thank you,” Viren concludes with a half-contrite swallow.

She doesn’t reply, but as she turns to go, there’s a twinkle to her, a suggestion of a smile, a hint she knows something Viren doesn’t. At this point, it seems redundant. In spite of a life dedicated to the study of magic, he is grimly sure: the total tonnage of what she knows and he doesn’t could stun a team of oxen in its tracks. 

When she goes, the birds go with her, their loping steps carrying them into the dark, and the night is clear and quiet. By now the moon has risen, round and sharp-edged, as white as salt. How many full moons does that make since the night everything began to fall apart? The time underground robs him of certainty, but six seems about right. 

“Are you certain we shouldn’t have gone with her?” Aaravos asks. 

“What does it matter to _you?”_ Viren snaps, sitting back down on the beach, eyes fixed on the locked door hovering above the place where shore meets sea. The _Core Nexus,_ apparently. “It’s not as if _you_ have any pressing need to eat or sleep. Go, if that’s what you want.”

Instead of responding, Aaravos simply stands at the edge of the dune, watching the woods, likely observing or listening as the last traces of her disappear. After a few silent minutes, he sits down as well. He leans back on his elbows, and looks up for the first time in quite some time at the stars. 

Eywesh’s assessment was correct, Viren _is_ afraid, but did she realize exactly what it is that frightens him?

That Claudia might not come out of the nexus, yes, that is _one_ fear, but there are others catching up to it, threatening to overtake it. 

There is also the awful image of her stumbling back through the door alone. She shouldn’t have to do that, someone should _be_ there. 

_Then_ there’s the fear he dares not confess: that she _will_ come back out, but that whatever happened will have transformed her in some way that puts impossible distance between them, that even if she lives, he’ll still have lost her. What’s intimidating about _that_ is the inevitability. If it isn’t this, it will be something. Viren was that age too, once.

Shouldn’t a parent want their child to surpass them, to go beyond them? He used to feel pride and hope when he imagined Soren and Claudia in far-flung places, doing great things, creating lives independent of him. He looked forward to the peace and quiet. Why then is it so chilling to imagine her leaving him behind now?

It is a hammer, striking a nail into him. Hasn’t he lost _enough?_ His best friend, his position, his potential, his mission, his home, his son. 

His son -- He’s been trying not to think of this, afraid of the way it could dwarf every other loss, but it shoulders through the door now as he faces the possibility of having driven both children from him forever.

For some losses, there are others he can blame at least in part, but not this. 

If he went back and did it all again, there’s a lot he’d do the same, but _not this._

He can _talk_ about other losses, other regrets, but on _this,_ humiliation -- something that, at his most lucid, he _knows_ he doesn’t handle gracefully, much as that knowledge never seems to help him in the moment -- turns his tongue to ice. 

To go into it would be to relive the embarrassment of his mistakes. His parents taught him better. If you brought it on yourself, keep it to yourself, that was the rule, the breaking of which would add another layer of discomfort. Whatever he plans to say, he knows himself well enough to guess that justifications and excuses will escape him before he even realizes what he’s doing. So: better to stay quiet. 

Or is that also another layer of excuses? From another angle, perhaps all he has succeeded in doing is forcing Claudia into her own isolation, where Soren is concerned. He’s seen the way she avoids bringing it up. Considering his own actions from a distance, he’d forgive her for wondering if he cares at all. 

If this _Core_ is truly somehow the origin of human magic, does it know him? Does _it_ care? Do primal sources truly have a will, or is he merely subject to a mindless, fathomless force of the universe? 

Viren glances over at Aaravos, who has given up entirely on sitting and is stretched out on his back, resting his head on clasped hands -- and on the skin there, Viren notes a few new points of light. 

“Aaravos--” he says, with no small amount of awkwardness.

“What,” Aaravos asks deliberately, unconcerned with whatever subject Viren was about to broach, eyes fixed on the sky, “would you consider a cold night, in Katolis?”

Viren leans on his elbow, so they are closer to the same level. _“What?”_

“If someone said _this is a cold night,_ what sort of weather would they mean?”

“You’ve _been_ there, haven’t you? In your body, I mean.”

“It wasn’t Katolis then, and the question stands.”

“Other than the obvious?” Viren raises a brow. “A frost, at least, if not snowfall. Ice in the river, perhaps. Wind like needles. A blizzard wouldn’t be unusual.”

“So, _nothing_ like this,” Aaravos leads.

It’s brisk, Viren wouldn’t mind having another layer, or a blanket, and as the night wears on he suspects it may get uncomfortable if they don’t build a fire, but Aaravos is right: it’s not even close to what he’d call _a cold night,_ and yet--

 _“A cold night to visit,”_ Viren quotes Eywesh. 

“One wonders what a _warm_ night would be like,” Aaravos says, tinged with wistfulness, “if _this_ is what they consider cold.”

“And?”

“The weather is mild,” Aaravos ticks on long twilight fingers, “the locals are hospitable, the land is beautiful and teems with the necessities of life, humans are safe, and dark magic is freely practiced.” Laughing, he summarizes: “Your mystery hum led you to paradise, and _you still can’t relax._ It’s... hilarious.”

Viren settles himself churlishly into the sand, finally giving in to lying down and looking up. Billions of stars look back at him.

“Not all of us are as untethered as you,” Viren grumbles. 

“Tethered? Or _clinging?”_

Perhaps both. It’s an interesting thought experiment. What if his resurrection was a rebirth, complete with an umbilicus, now long since dried and overdue to be cut?

What if he cut it? 

He knows himself better than to think it’s that easy. Too often he wonders what they’ll write about him, when history is recorded, a tender bruise of a subject he masochistically pokes from time to time. 

What if the best thing he can do for Soren, and Katolis, the west, everything he ever knew and loved, and even himself, is to let go? To not only take his hands off the reins but get off that horse entirely and walk away?

“Do you hear that?” Aaravos’ ears twitch and he gets up on one elbow, squinting into the woods. 

Just when he’s about to say no, the answer changes to yes: the giants-step of low drums and the patter of high ones, and then, shortly after, the whistle of something flutelike, and the peal of tiny bells. 

Between the trees, torches bob in rhythm -- two at first, and then several more.

“Ei, Viren of Nowhere!” Calls Eywesh musically through the trees. “Are you still waiting here!?”

She leads the parade out over the dune and onto the beach, up the strand just a little. Aaravos is on his feet first, and this time, Viren takes the help to stand.

At a quick count, there are at least twenty people, dressed variously in adorned tunics and baggy-sleeved robes, with soft leather shoes. A few are already setting up a bonfire, others rooting through crates they carried together on stretchers. Stragglers keep wandering out from the woods. Viren spots the musicians, the percussionists resting their arms on the drums strapped to their chests. Most have the marks of magic on their hands and faces.

“What _is_ this?” Viren asks, as if he couldn’t tell. 

“What’s it look like?” Eywesh grins, and Viren thinks her teeth are surprisingly healthy for an old woman in an island village. Is there a dentist? Or does she have a spell for that? “You wanted to stay here for your little girl, so we brought the party to you! _A child has entered the nexus!_ I told you, that’s cause for celebration, no matter whose, and besides, it’s been awhile since we had a festival on the beach.” 

A couple of cheery whoops go up behind her. 

“What _happens?”_ He asks her again. 

“Do you remember the first time you did magic?” She asks.

“I… sort of.”

“Then you’ve heard the language of the Core, no matter how faintly.”

Viren turns and looks back at the door, as unsettlingly still as ever amid the movement of the waves. A step behind him, Aaravos is unreservedly delighted. 

“You don’t understand,” Viren says in a hurry, “there’s a dam of magic on the continent, it can’t possibly have been--”

Eywesh presses a square wooden cup into his grasp.

“Dandelion wine,” she answers before he asks. “Goes great with the venison. She’ll be _fine,_ have a little faith.”

Faith has never been a strong point, but setting that aside, just the _word_ “venison” is enough to make his stomach echo back to life. There’s no pretending he isn’t famished, and as long as he doesn’t have to leave, it’s not as if eating would do any _harm._

Aaravos’ hand is on his elbow, and his voice is in Viren’s ear -- a familiar sensation.

“Let _go,”_ Aaravos advises, and takes a cup when it’s passed to him. 

“A toast!” Eywesh shouts to the gathering group. They're already passing around clay bottles and pouring the contents into little cups, clearly having anticipated this. She leans in and whispers, “What’s her name? Your daughter?”

“Claudia,” Viren hears himself say, his voice half-lost to himself. 

“To Claudia!” Eywesh calls.

“To Claudia!” The group echoes. 

All at once, they drink, and Viren’s muscle-memory of etiquette is the straw that breaks the back of his hesitation. 

He drinks.

* * *

Rayla makes it all the way to the city wall before she stops. To go any further would be to leave Callum on his own, and that’s not an option. 

That first night, angry and lost, she wanders the edge-streets, hood pulled up over her head, keeping moving to keep warm. Lujanne’s illusions have fooled Rayla before, and now Runaan’s agents wear them, so an excess of caution seems exactly the right amount. 

Here she is, in the human lands, hiding from other elves. Only _her_ life is so ridiculous that this may as well happen.

She can’t go home, she’s not sure she trusts her mother to take her side, and she has no choice but to steer clear of the castle. Out in the woods, she could sleep in a sturdy tree, and the forest is full of things to forage in a pinch, at any time of year. Here, if she wants a bed or a meal or a cloak, the humans will want money she doesn’t have.

What is it with coins? Forever her problem, one way or another. 

It’s a stark contrast between here and the upper city, where Callum led her on their tour-date months ago. If anything, it’s a better place for the situation she’s found herself in -- more shadows to keep to, fewer people who’ve seen her face, and a general atmosphere of minding one’s own business. 

All night she walks the cobbles, learning the layout of the narrow streets and alleyways that form the lower city’s labyrinth. Most of the roads are too narrow even for a single horse to pass comfortably. In the densest places, people make their homes and businesses anywhere they can fit, and some places they can’t. 

Before sunrise, she picks a sturdy rooftop angled against a higher wall, tucking herself out of view and next to a warm chimney, so she can sleep most of the day away in peace, emerging only just before the market ends. 

It is embarrassingly easy to steal a loaf of bread unnoticed. There’s a twinge of guilt, but it passes. Only once she’s safely back in her little roof nook does the weight of it all really start to come crashing down. 

Rayla lets herself cry until the moon is up and no longer, keeping as quiet as she can so as not to alert whoever’s below her hideaway.

That night she wanders again, with little else to do. In a day, the moon will be full, and she has a plan for that, but until then, all she can do is bide her time. In the dark of an alleyway, she watches an agent in disguise as a mage arrest a seller of odd things.

She lingers, and sure enough, it isn’t long before a _real_ sale goes through on the same street: money changes hands, and so does a little sack with something wriggling inside.

They part ways. Curiosity is a rope around her waist, but she is torn: follow the merchant, or the mage?

At the last moment, she chooses the latter, steps as silent as an owl's wing. He’s a young man, perhaps a few years older than Callum, with black hair and a nervous bearing, though he gives no sign of being aware that she’s tailing him, so his anxiety is a little pointless. 

If she’s honest with herself, she knows what she wants: to make up her mind. 

She wants to see something grisly and awful, like _that man’s_ secret rooms in the castle, or something gentle and compassionate, like Callum rescuing her family, something to give her a sense of whether she was right about dark magic before, or whether her doubt should have a chance to grow. 

Ultimately she is disappointed. The boy lives alone in a dirt-walled home half below-ground, maybe converted from a root cellar, with the only window installed off-kilter and right at street level. He tucks the bag away, lights a few candles, and spends the rest of the night reading quietly from a dusty tome as thick as his head.

No matter how long she watches him, he doesn’t do any magic at all.

The following night, when the moon is finally full and completely above the roof-line, she doesn’t waste a moment before shuddering into her Moonshadow form. It’s not a sensation she’s ever been fond of, but it’s the only way to accomplish her goal: checking on Callum. 

Her skill hardly _guarantees_ going unseen. It’s an illusion, like everything, a sleight of hand that depends on attention not drawn to the palm doing the trick. It would be easy for them to foil if they were expecting her, if they put any effort into looking.

Despite this, she amuses herself wondering why she’s not spotted. 

There are Moonshadow elves among the guards, and one would think they’d have orders to look out for her specifically. Don’t they sense her? Sense _something?_

Are they overworked? Disloyal? Apathetic? So accustomed to routine they’re programmed not to see anything less than obvious? She catches herself thinking _as bad as humans_ before internally scrubbing the thought. If any of this has taught her anything, it’s that those old assumptions never applied.

There are bars on Callum’s window, which puts a damper on her fantasies of engineering an escape, but is also convenient, as it gives her something easy to grab onto when she makes the last jump. 

The metal parentheses ring briefly on impact, and she mutes them with her hand. It’s enough to get Callum’s attention, anyway. 

“Rayla!?” He is on his knees at the open window, hissing at her, his pupils adjusting awkwardly as he tries to focus on her.

“Callum! You see me! Wait. You _really see_ me.” Rayla hooks her elbows and knees around the bars so that the place where they curve in toward the wall becomes like a makeshift chair. With a needling smile, she asks, “Were you __maybe_ expectin’ _ I’d turn up at your window like in one of your stupid fairytales?”

“No! I mean, not expecting. More like… uh, hoping, I guess. I _was_ worried about you.” He laughs at himself. The sudden flush of pink makes his face glow, and the candlelight behind him turns his flyaway wisps of hair into a halo. 

Rayla says, “Sorry I look--”

“Awesome?”

“Stop, I'm creepy, I know how it is, you don’ have to pretend.”

“Say what you want,” Callum gives her an exaggerated look of evaluation. “ _I_ think it looks awesome. But, you’re okay? Nobody hurt you, did they?”

“Only _you,_ right now, thinkin’ those chumps could hold me,” she feigns both confidence and offense. The fight and the escape were terrifying, but Callum frets enough as it is. “I should be asking you that question.”

“I’m okay,” he assures, though something passes across his face, a flash of exhaustion, a buried grimace, for reasons he must not want to display or discuss. “It’s... not that bad. I mean, they’re feeding me? And--oh! Do you remember Narampu? Ezran’s crownguard? She’s a huge help.”

“The Rootfolk girl?” Rayla tries to summon an image of her face, but her memory is hazy. 

“Yeah! She has some kinda sixth sense for tunnels and caves and stuff. There’s none in _my_ room, but she _can_ get into Ez’s old room with the passageways he used. We wedged loose a board in Bait’s door so she can pass snacks and messages and stuff, when she has time.”

“That’s… unexpected. You’re sure you trust her?” She tamps down the wisp of dumb, blunt jealousy that's only really her aggravation with the circumstances, anyway.

“I think so? Just in case, I’m not writing anything… incriminating. Just reminding Ez I love him and miss him and stuff. The usual.”

What to say? She settles on, “I wish I could get you out of here. What do you do, trapped alone in a room, other than write _non-incriminating_ letters?”

“Mostly I watch the stars,” he says. “Draw the ones I can see, like a map. If I do one at the same time every night, it’ll be like a flip-book.”

“Callum,” She begins cautiously. “Just _how_ long do you think they’ll _keep_ you in here? You sound like you’re planning for--”

“I don’t know, okay?” There’s an edge, subtle but present, only noticeable if she looks for it, like a Moonshadow form for emotions.

“Okay.”

“I just… I really don’t know, and I don’t want to get my hopes up, and I’m _so_ happy to see you, for a second I thought I’d passed out and was dreaming, but it’s just--”

“Me too,” she says, and that seems to steady them both.

Rayla stabilizes so she can reach the other arm through the bars. In turn, Callum leans out the window, bracing against them to get as close as he can. A hug with an iron third wheel is better than no hug at all, and there’s enough room too for a kiss, if they don’t mind their faces touching the metal.

They _don’t_ mind.

It is brief at first, and then not so brief, the first brush of their lips opening the door to something more vehement. Her free hand goes to the back of his head, and he mirrors her, so that even when their mouths part, their foreheads stay together. 

“Yeah I definitely think this is cool,” Callum says of the Moonshadow form, teasing a breathy laugh from both of them.

Rueful bitterness washes over her when she looks up and sees the moon threatening to pass to the other side of the castle. Why couldn't Callum's window have been facing a different direction? _Any_ other direction?

“Unfortunately we haven’t got much time. I’m not strong enough to keep this up very long outside the moonlight. Callum, This might be a weird question…”

“What is it?”

“Do you have _money?”_ Her ears go back. 

She knows money’s a weird topic for humans, but her familiarity is lacking. Unlike some other elves, her village doesn’t really use it, mostly bartering and gifting, and assassins in particular aren’t allowed to handle it at all -- something about _wages of death,_ or somesuch.

“What?” Callum’s face screws up in confusion. 

“I want to stay close, here in Katolis, in case… well, just that. I want to stay close.”

“Oh!” Recognition dawns on him. “I get it, yeah, wait, are you sure that’s safe?”

“Callum, I _swear--”_

“Okay, okay, yeah, no, I’ve got you, stay here.” He pulls away and a cold breeze disperses his warmth, leaving her wishing more than ever that _Moonshadow form_ came with _phase through walls_ powers. As far as she knows, though, there’s only one way to do that, and it’s a whole other arcanum. 

Through the bars, she watches him dig around a few places: in a trunk by the window, between his mattresses, under his clothes in a drawer. He comes back with a jangling fabric sack. 

With a moment to think, she realizes there’s more than one reason to hang around: if Runaan really did want to look for her, spies would certainly find her on the road, or in the Silvergrove. Perversely, she might actually be _safer_ among the masses of lower Katolis.

“Don’t get any room that’s more than one of _these_ a night,” he holds up one type of coin, and then a second type, about which he says, “and a meal should be no more than two of these medium ones. And that’s like, a _good_ meal.”

“Got it. And um… how much would be a regular amount to pay for a _cloak?”_

“I can give you a cloak!" His voice goes up an octave.

“A royal cloak? Don’t people _know_ what those look like?”

“Oh. Good point. Maybe three or four of the big coins, if it’s a nice one, but there’s cheap ones too. Be careful, there’s also jewels in the bag, a sapphire and an emerald from Neolandia. Keep those safe, don’t let anyone see them unless you want to sell them.”

“Are you sure that’s okay?” Rayla says in an awed half-whisper. 

“Rayla, they’ve been sitting in a case for five years, I don’t know who thinks that’s a good birthday present for a ten year old. Royals, right?” He grins lopsidedly, a reminder that he wasn’t born into any of this.

“Right, I guess,” Rayla says through an emerging smile.

“If we get through this and Neolandia’s offended, I’ll apologize then.”

“If?”

“When,” he corrects. “We’re going to get through this. Together. Well, not together-together, because--I mean, obviously--but--”

She pulls him in by the collar and silences him with another _charged_ kiss, into which he gladly melts.

The moon crosses out of sight, its face no longer on her. No dawdling, she has to get back in the moonlight before she loses control of the illusion.

“Here’s hoping I see you before the next full moon,” she offers. 

“Me too.”

“I love you.”

“Hey, that’s the first time you said it first!” Callum points out. And then, in response to Rayla’s flattened ears and stammer, he tags on: “I love you too.”

They trade troubled smiles, and then she makes the swing and leap to the next ledge, and is gone. 

It takes most of the night to get back to the lower city, though in much less of a hurry than the last time, once she’s clear of the castle. It’s suddenly a much more beautiful night than it seemed before, worthy of savoring.

After sunrise, Rayla goes back to the same baker from whom she stole and deliberately overpays him, making it look like an accident and slipping into the crowd before he can protest. At the edge of town, she finds a post office advertising their new hires: two elves, ferrying parcels to Lux Aurea and the woodland settlements.

Her new cloak handily conceals her as she writes a short, coded letter to Ethari and passes it to the man behind the desk, who tells her the Moonshadow messenger should be making another trip in a few days. She fumbles with her coins to figure out the price of postage, but if the clerk notices, he doesn’t say anything.

Overall, the day is teaching her that living like a human is _much_ easier with money.

With that done, there’s only one more order of business: Finding a place to stay -- specifically, the type of place willing to keep a few secrets.

* * *

The route deeper into Xadia is an odd one, and the map is only somewhat helpful. The most important thing to Raum is to get as far from Doctrina Limen as possible, preferably on a path less traveled. 

It’s still faintly unbelievable that Soren’s clumsily executed lie along the lines of _borrowing_ Raum for a few days in Xadia actually worked.

(“You can thank Claudia for that one,” Soren points out. “I was just trying her way first.” When Raum asks what that means, Soren shrugs and says, _"_ _trust." )_

It seems likely to Raum that the elves were more _uninterested_ than _stupid,_ however, and he doubts the ruse will survive more than the day or so it’ll take Vif to return to Katolis.

Raum suggests cutting south to cut the risk of straying into a Moonshadow settlement.

Camping is a purely functional affair, they sleep a few hours each in shifts and move on as soon as they can. There’ll be time to rest more once they’ve put further miles between themselves and the border.

Initially, the going is slow, a slog up the western face of one of the larger hills (or smaller mountains, hard to say which) that dot the southern stretch on the Xadian side. Staying off even _rudimentary_ roads involves an amount of backtracking, detouring, brush-clearing, and getting lost that would be frustrating under other circumstances. When in doubt, they go whatever direction seems to lead _up._

Raum doesn’t mind. Every step away from that nightmare brings a glee that borders on mania, and he can use that: a wind beneath him, so he can press forward despite how much stamina he’s lost. 

“Hey,” Soren gets his attention. “Are you _sure_ you don’t need a break?” 

“If _you_ want one, just say so,” Raum tries to bluff, but it’s hard to hike and talk at the same time. The labored breath in the middle of his sentence gives him away. He revises, “When we get to the top. Can’t be far now, can it?”

“Right.”

It _can_ be far, neither of them has much to base that assumption on, but sometimes there are things one simply has to believe to keep going. In the end, though, they luck out. He’s got no way to tell the time, but doesn’t feel like more than half an hour before they reach it. 

He’s a little behind, telling from the way Soren stops up ahead: that’s it, they’re there. 

“Whoa,” Soren whispers, barely audible past the chattering of the sunset chorus of birds. 

Raum can pick out the rattling chimney swifts and croaking snipes, all getting ready for the evening’s acrobatics. He’s just thinking how if there’s many of the latter around, they probably aren’t far from water, when he crests the ridge. 

His suspicion is confirmed, and then some. 

To either side, peaks of higher mountains stretch on and on for what seems like forever. Ahead, moss and stone turns again to clouds of red-and-gold foliage, rolling away into a valley at the edge of the largest lake Raum has ever seen, stretching on so far he can’t see where it stops. Somewhere beyond it, more hazy mountains loom, dressed in gray-blue shawls of mist. 

At the foot of the mountain, the woods stop abruptly, and in their place, a vast expanse of crumbled white stone sticks out like a sore thumb. Corners and walls stand alone, supporting nothing, and patches of green crawl across mounds of rubble. Pillars slant in rows like the ribs of a dead giant, wrapped in vines with broad leaves, the flag of nature’s slow victory.

“Weird,” Soren says. “It looks like those were... buildings, or something.”

 _“Were,”_ Raum agrees. “Still want that break?”

“Are you kidding? Even more old beef jerky and crackers is sounding good about now.”

For the third time since they left, Soren tosses Raum a little envelope filled with dried meat, and Raum has to eat it without crying at how good it is to have any kind of meat at all. Well, no, he corrects himself. It isn’t like that, he doesn’t _have_ to, but he’s fairly certain they could both do without the inevitable awkwardness that would follow. 

The sun going down behind them ignites the sparse clouds in a darkening heather sky, and while they eat, they watch the shadow of the mountain stretch longer and longer across the water. 

With the sky clear and the moon full, it’s bright enough for them to press on as soon as they can. The eastern side of the mountain is much easier going. When they reach the border of the ruins, woods behind and debris ahead, Soren takes a celebratory swig of his waterskin. 

He _vanishes_ from Raum’s peripheral vision. 

“Soren!?” 

He’s on his knees, coughing and gasping. “The water--” 

Raum scoops up the waterskin and sniffs the opening. 

“It _smells_ fine.”

“You try it, then!” Soren rasps, recovering. 

“What was wrong with it?”

“You’re gonna think I’m nuts.”

“Try me,” Raum offers.

Soren coughs a little more. “It’s _spicy.”_

“How? We both drank out of it just a little while ago.”

While Soren stammers his confusion, Raum risks the tiniest sip. Even _that_ is enough to light his mouth and throat on fire.

“Ah, _shit!”_ He scrapes his tongue. “What the--How? I don’t--”

“See!?”

Soren digs in his bag for crackers, and Raum gratefully accepts one, looking around the thin trunks as he takes a bite--

An _anguished wail._

“Raum!”

“Soren!?”

“It wasn’t me!”

“Well _I_ didn’t scream!!”

“There’s only two of us here!”

“How could--”

“Wait. Give me that.” Soren snatches the cracker out of his hand and takes a bite himself. 

Another cry _._ Soren drops the cracker on the ground as if it had bit him back.

“Raum?” Soren says. “Is it just me, or did the _cracker--”_

“Yeah. That’s…” He almost says _impossible,_ and then his heart falls into his stomach. Spicy water? Screaming food? Through a sigh, he says, “Moon magic. Damn.”

“Ugh,” Soren groans and scrapes his nails through his hair in agitation. “You can say that again. Stupid moon. Seriously, I swear I can _not stand_ the--what?”

Through snickering, Raum says, “Nothing. Just. It’s funny.”

He regrets, more than ever, letting them drift apart. He could have used that sentiment, a few years back.

“You don’t think it sucks? ‘Cause I think--” Soren raises his voice and, apparently too tired and irritated to care, screams into the dark. “The moon SUCKS!”

Raum should be worried, but he’s laughing too hard _._ He doubles over, leaning on Soren’s shoulder for support. “No no, I agree!” He raises his voice to the sky. “Eat shit, moon!”

And that gets Soren too, and they both cackle until they’re out of breath.

“Rude!” says a high-pitched voice from out of sight, somewhere in the branches of forest they came from.

And all at once, they’re both sober as judges. Soren slips Raum a knife -- nothing fancy, more for utility than battle, but it’s better than nothing -- and rests a hand on the hilt of his sword. 

“Whoever you are, you got us!” Soren hollers “Haha! Very funny! You can leave us alone now!”

“But we’re having fun?” Answers the voice. 

“The night’s just begun!” Supplies a second, similar voice.

There is whispering among the leaves. A flash of one leather-clad elf, and then another, like fireflies.

“You’ll stop this nonsense, now! By my command!” This new, _third_ voice is motherly and imperious all at once, and belongs to someone much less deceptive. 

From beyond the archway of one of the few limestone buildings that still stands comes a blue-skinned elf woman clad in fluttering, shifting layers of seafoam silk. Her fingers are webbed. Tidebound. Ribbons of pearls stream from her horns, clicking in the movement of each step.

Behind her, two slight-built Skywing elves with dark wings march in step, and at her side -- twins. Another Tidebound elf, dressed plainly in gray, walks behind her, face veiled and eyes downcast.

“Queen Laetifica! We heed your call.” The owner of the first voice flickers out of Moonshadow form, on bended knee. 

“We only meant to play a game, is all!” Justifies the second from a deep bow. Now he can see them both, Raum realizes they’re _also_ twins, which only makes things stranger. 

“Be silent if you value both your lives!” Answers the Tidebound elf they called Queen Laetifica. “I’ll bear no disrespect from such as you. Was it the king’s command that you do this?”

Both Moonshadow elves have bows and full quivers, and the Skywing elves have scimitars. Do they _care_ \-- that’s the mystery. If Soren and Raum try to leave, will that only draw badly unwanted attention?

“No command, we follow our bliss!” says the first twin. 

“But,” says the second, sharing a mischievous look with her sister, “he _did_ command that we do this!” 

They dart across the space between them, and, hands clasped, each uses her free hand to draw a rune in the air. 

In unison, they cast a spell. Two runes, one phrase: _-In-amore-comédit!_

“No, my lady, wait!” Cries the gray-veiled handmaiden, but it’s useless. 

The only way to know the spell has done anything is the queen’s stagger. During it, the twins vanish, giggles bouncing off tree-trunks until it’s impossible to trace where they’ve gone by sound alone. Raum’s just glad they left before they got a chance to reveal things he’s not ready to discuss. While the handmaiden tries to get her queen’s attention, Raum nudges Soren with his elbow. 

Soren nods, and they start creeping backwards. Just a few steps to the tree-line. Maybe they can go around the ruins to the south? It would take longer, but they’d avoid whatever _this_ is, which might be worth it.

“Are you well? What have they done?” Asks the handmaiden. Hesitatingly, in response to the way the queen cradles her head, she asks, “Queen Laetifica?”

She straightens, shakes her head, and looks up. As her eyes focus, her gaze lights first on Soren, and a peculiar expression takes over her face. 

“You were to be the next puzzle to solve,” she says, suddenly soft, “but now, I see what brings you here to us! Come, newest lover, tell your name to me.”

“Uh.” Soren looks at Raum, then back at the queen, who has abandoned her regal bearing completely, instead swaying as if drunk.

“I think she means you,” Raum says. 

“Should I _tell_ \--”

“My queen! Allow me,” says the handmaiden, stepping between them to the queen’s obvious displeasure. “I will conference with him, and… bring him to the lake!”

“Ah yes, this is a perfect thought indeed,” agrees the queen. “Our nexus is a most romantic place. An introduction by the lapping shore, the full moon serving as our chaperone!”

Raum starts to snicker, but the handmaiden shoots him a cutting glare. 

To the queen, she suggests: “You should go ahead. By the time that we arrive, you will be prepared.”

Of all the possibilities that ran through Raum’s mind the moment he realized they were contending with Moonshadow magic, a court of mixed elves making mischief in the ruins of a city was not on the list. He’s not sure whether this is better or worse than the _thief_ or _settlement ambush_ options. 

“Farewell for now, my human crowned in gold,” says the queen, earning a wince from the handmaiden. 

Wordlessly, the two Skywing elves lead the Tidebound queen deeper into the ruins along an overgrown stone path. 

Only once the queen is out of sight, the handmaiden flips the gray veil away from her face. Like the queen, her eyes are black, every bit, from pupil on out. At first, Raum thought they didn’t blink, but then he realizes that he was looking for the wrong thing -- the sideways twitch of a whitish membrane _is_ their blink.

“My name is Abis,” she says so quietly it’s almost a whisper, glancing back at where the queen has retreated. “Wane and Wax are King’s servants. He likes to play tricks. We have heard the news. Peace with humans in the west. Still, peril lives here. 

“We can see that,” Raum says. “You want to tell us where we are?”

Abis sighs. “The Court of Misfits. The king and queen are at odds. They always have been. She steals his servants. He tries to embarrass her. Round and round it goes. The moon and the tides, give and take, forever locked.” She points at the full moon. “He’s _most_ factious now.”

“It’s not like they knew _we’d_ be here,” Raum considers. “Did they have a plan B?”

“This spell is not new. Infatuation magic, to humiliate.” Abis says with a sigh. “Target matters not. If not you, some woodland beast. Humans are the same.”

“Am I _not_ supposed to be insulted here?” Soren points out. “Because--”

“My lady is fair, but do not take advantage! I must ask you this.” She looks off into the distance of the ruins, apparently ignoring Soren’s offense. Her hand presses the fabric of her gown to her chest. “Hair like storms at sea, her neck, as lithe as a swan, her eyes, full of stars. Strong too is her heart, her wit as sharp as sun-blades, duty is her guide. And yet, I beg you, it is your greatest challenge, you _must_ resist her!”

When he catches Raum’s eye, Soren’s mouth makes the shape of the word: _What._ Raum’s answer is a tiny shrug. He jerks his head tautly toward the woods. 

“And, at any rate,” Abis says, suddenly recalling that they’re there, “there is danger to you too. A kiss breaks the spell. But, once it’s broken, she’ll become a tidal wave. Furious, lethal.”

Soren takes a big step backward. He glances sidelong at Raum, and then says, ”Okay, well, for the record, I already wasn’t gonna--I mean, that won’t be a problem.”

This gets a shy smile out of Abis. “A true stalwart knight. All along, I knew deep down, humans can be good.”

“This is starting to feel unnecessary.”

This lady is really something else. Does she _want_ Soren to get involved or not? Raum cuts in. “If it’s all the same to you, we’ll just go. For best… uh… resistance. Okay?”

He puts his hand on Soren’s back to shove him into motion.

“Wait! She will go mad! Please, you must help me cure her!” Abis calls. “I may have a plan!”

Soren starts to turn, Raum tries to stop him.

“I’m sorry to hear your royals are like this,” Raum says, “but it really is a wrong place wrong time thing, queen-saving isn’t our business, good meeting you, we’ll just be on our way--”

“No! You have it wrong!” Abis promises. “He may help, and yet be safe. Help me. _I’ll_ help _you.”_

“Help us how?” Raum is skeptical. 

“You’re going east, yes? The far side of the small-sea? I’ll provide passage! No one is swifter. With me, you save a fortnight! Please, consider it.”

Raum makes the mistake of looking at Soren. His eyes are lit from within, plaintive and resolved all at once. He’s proving Abis right, with that heroic stubbornness written all over his face. 

“If Claudia’s out there, she might be all alone. You saw the map. Two weeks? What if that’s the difference between--” Soren swallows. “I mean, it could matter.” He turns to Abis. “What’s your plan?”

She explains it quickly, and when she’s done, all Raum can think is that her definition of _safe_ is apparently one he was not previously aware of. 

The walk through the ruins to the lake’s edge is a quiet one. On the ground, he can pick out details that weren’t visible from the mountain: reliefs and statues with their faces worn away. One of them’s got an arm broken off, and under other circumstances, he might even be tempted to make a joke. Being around Soren kind of makes him start feeling like a person who _could_ joke again, in a way he hasn’t for years, but now doesn’t feel like the moment to try.

At the corner of a lonely, crumbling wall, something is etched into what remains of the smooth outer surface -- too messy to be art, more like graffiti. He looks closer as they pass.

 _HENRAI VISITED THIS PLACE,_ it says, and, farther down the wall, there is a small, crude drawing of a penis. The same artist, or two different ones? Raum is led to wonder.

It seems, on the face of it, more like something a human would do, and Raum’s only ever heard of humans (not elves) with that name. Though, he supposes he doesn’t know that many elvish names anyway. _Could_ humans have lived here, once? 

Up close, the lake takes over their field of view. Queen Laetifica awaits them just as Abis had hoped, up on a ledge at the top of a flight of stairs so badly broken he has to use his hand for balance. 

“It can be said he is more lovely now, than at the moment when we first did meet!” Says the queen, her arms outstretched. Once, when Raum was little, he grabbed a fish out of a stream and got a cut from its fin on the palm he no longer has. Are the tidebound arm-fins as sharp as that? Sharper?

Raum positions himself so that Soren stands between him and the edge. In their little drama, he’s ready for his cue. 

Soren takes one step, and then another. Raum feigns a stumble (though with all the rocks about, he nearly takes one for real) and, in the process, gives Soren a shove. It’s weaker than they planned, what with trying to avoid going over the cliff himself. Bless him, Soren _launches_ himself over the edge in a ridiculous overcompensation. He looks like he was hit by a battering ram.

“My golden human! No, he must be saved!” Cries the queen, as Soren hits the water. 

Raum looks over the edge too. The stones in his pockets do their job, and Soren’s sinking fast. He has to, for this to work. If he’s too near the surface when she reaches him, it will all be for nothing. 

He still thinks it’s too risky. The moment Soren’s under, Raum holds his own breath. 

“Queen Laetifica!” Addresses Abis. “You must save him, or he’ll die! I’ll deal with _this_ one.”

The queen nods curtly, peels off the outer layer of her robes, and dives gracefully off the edge. Duty and devotion indeed. 

“Under the water, my queen is so strong and brave, you need not worry.” 

Raum doesn’t answer. After the way Abis spoke of Queen Laetifica before, he’s pretty sure she’s prone to exaggeration. And anyway, he’s too busy resisting the temptation to breathe, feeling the pressure in his lungs. How is Soren, at holding his breath? If they ever had a contest, in the past, he can’t recall. 

Seconds tick by. 

A shadow reappears beneath the surface. Darkness edges in around Raum’s vision, but he clenches his fist tight and bites his tongue. 

He has to breathe, which means Soren has to. They’re visible now, how much further could it be?

At last, they break the surface, both taking a breath at the same time. Raum trips down the steps and meets them at the shore. Soren coughs a little, but Raum helps him to his feet and they get to bask in the relief. 

Queen Laetifica hums to get their attention, and when she has it, she bows deeply.

Not knowing what to do, Raum returns it, and drags an oblivious Soren down with him. 

“I’m sorry that you had to do such things,” she says, “but thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Your valor ought to be commended here. My nexus cured me of that twisted state, but how could you have known it would be so?”

“We... didn’t?” Soren admits right out. He nods to Abis. Through another round of coughing, he says, “her idea.”

 _“She’s_ the one who said if you got close enough to the Ocean Nexus it would cure you,” Raum elaborates, giving Soren a helpful strike on the back. _“And_ that under the spell, you’d follow Soren anywhere.”

Abis bows in a sweep of fabric, and places the outer robe back on her queen’s shoulders. 

“Queen Laetifica. To see you thus hurt my heart. Action needed done. In compensation, I promised passage across. Do you give me leave?”

The queen nods, and gestures to the large, elaborate golden vessel on the pier down the shore. At her whistle, the Skywing twins from before come down from a cliff above where they met her, and escort her back into the ruins. 

“Come, we must away,” says Abis. “The boat is pulled by serpents. It takes but a day!”

She leads the way, Soren and Raum trailing behind as the moon sinks behind the mountains in the west.

“Were you scared?” Raum stuffs his hand in his pocket.

Soren holds a brave face for about five seconds before scoffing so suddenly it makes Abis turn back and look. “For a second, I _definitely_ thought I was gonna die.”

Between them is that certain unique smile, reserved exclusively for near-miss escapes from doom.

“Just like old times,” Raum says. 

“Just like old times,” Soren agrees.

* * *

Logically, Claudia knows there was a time before she did magic, but she has little recollection of it. One of the earliest clear memories she _has_ is of that late afternoon in the private library with her mother, the agarwood smell of her perfume oils, the orange light on the dust in the air, the ancient carpet brushing her bare feet… 

...And the moment of reaching out to that infinite starless night for the first time. The place she went in sleep, the hollowing as the night reached back into her in return, carving out a home where she invited it to live.

This, now, feels like that. 

Almost.

This feels like _that_ was the _tiniest_ crumb, and she’s been carrying that crumb around all these years, and now here she is, standing smack dab in the middle of the whole rest of the loaf.

Moving through the dark is like running in a dream: endless, impossible. She gets the sense her body and mind are only in the same place because she wants to keep them together, not because they necessarily _have_ to be. Her hair and clothes float around her, buoyed by something unseen, or perhaps by the lack of something.

At the last moment, before she entered, she knew whose voice it was. She can see his face: blue eyes, aquiline nose, hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, once he removed the Evenerean helmet. 

She knew it was Nin, and there was a chance to turn back, but she stepped through anyway. 

There are no screams now. Intuitively, she reaches out into the dark for him, and finds nothing but an echo of his memory, a fragment, lodged like a splinter. It wasn’t _really_ him, it was something that came from inside, just what would spur her into an action she wouldn’t overthink. 

In her hand, the eclipse stone grows heavy, and then heavier, until she finally gets the message. It is a _labor,_ to lift it above her head, and a relief in contrast, to send it to the ground, shattering into dust.

The darkness lifts, a fog burned off in the sun.

Claudia twists around. Everything is rolling hills covered in white, fluffy... snow? She bends down to touch it, but it's not _cold,_ and snow doesn't have little black--

Oh.

It's spiderwebs.

Miles and miles of white, fluffy webs cover the sparse grass and bushes, spiders wandering cheerfully about them like little chocolate sprinkles making homes in cotton candy.

 _Spiders in Evenere are known to flee to the fields and trees escaping flooding,_ reads the text, half in her head, half floating in air before her. _Some residents complain of being unable to walk around without the spiders climbing them to seek higher ground._

Water seeps out of the ground and pools around her feet. The spiders scale her shoes ahead of it, swarming her ankles, gamboling over each other to find purchase on the relative safety of her legs.

They’re climbing her body. For a few seconds she’s scared, but it’s not long before she realizes the water's rising fast, and the spiders and Claudia are in this mess _together._ She runs forward, coating her boots in muddy water and spider silk, bending down every few steps to scoop more spiders off the ground and toss them onto her chest and shoulders, and into her hair.

_She has to save them._

The water reaches her knees, and then hips. It's hard to run, she wants to swim, but if she dives, she’ll lose all the spiders, and they're counting on her. She keeps trying to wade through, but it just gets deeper and deeper, until the water's at her neck and then at her chin and there's only one thing left she can do.

Sometimes she tells herself Nin was probably going to die anyway. Other times, she assumes his friends and family were gone, so he wouldn’t have wanted to live. Occasionally she assures herself he would have done the same, if their positions were reversed -- wouldn’t _anyone_ make that exchange? Isn’t that what war is, boiled down? An exchange of strangers for loved ones? 

It would be a mistake to see these as _thoughts_ , rather, they are to _real_ thought what citronella is to summer bugs.

There is nowhere to hide now. No repellent, not that she’d use it if she could. She has no choice: she opens her mouth, and lets the spiders in.

Her head is full of skittering. They melt into the spongy bones and passages above her nose and fill every alveolus until they are one, Claudia and the spiders, and when the water rises far above her head by what seems like miles, she knows it's okay now to breathe, because the spiders will help. The breaths are thick and slow, but functional.

The seabed is cool and quiet. Her feet are stones, too heavy to swim, but she’s in no hurry. 

Somewhere far above, sun shines down through the thin leaves of the tall weeds around her, lighting them up and dappling the sandy floor in yellow-green.

Plants waver gently in the current, until she touches them, and they go rigid. She presses harder and harder, trying to push them out of the way to go off the path, but to no avail: they give just a little, and then no further,

_like skin over bone._

The weeds are not weeds. The weeds are people - an endless forest of bodies, impossibly thin and long, stretched like taffy with flattened arms and legs, rooted to the sandy floor by buried feet, still drifting with the movement of the waves.

Claudia looks up to see their faces, distorted mouths agape and eyes unblinking. 

She doesn’t want to touch them anymore.

As she moves through the narrow corridor created by the bodies, they turn back to plants behind her, making it tempting to go back, but she presses on, feeling more and more the crush of the water and the way each step seems to drop harder against the ground, more and more difficult to pick up.

When she looks down at her feet, it's exactly as she’d feared - with every step, they sink a little deeper, as if they're trying to take root in the soil and sand.

The truth, the _real thought_ is a _weight,_ an invisible rucksack she shrugged on that day at the spire, and it has become one with her, on her back, following her no matter what.

To see it as guilt would only be more thought-repellant. What she bears is _knowledge:_ a new understanding that to kill (up close or at a distance, justified or frivolous, human or elf or deer or mouse) is to take that life inside you and carry it with you always, whether you’re conscious of it or not. It took Nin for her to see what was always there.

Life, nourished by death, not opposites at all.

From the rich soil of that knowledge grows a strangling vine, a responsibility to do something that matters, a task that reminds her of itself like it wants to be checked off a list. TO DO: wash her hair, clean her bedroom, make every life she’s ever taken mean something, return her library books, etc.

She can't breathe fast, not down here. She can't swim and she can't run and her feet are sinking, she has to go, don't stop, don't stay, don’t get stuck, don't become the plants, move forward or you'll be here foreve--

\--rising.

Something's rising beneath her, pushing her up.

It emerges from the sand slowly, grains spilling off the top of the dome, until it is revealed: An enormous jellyfish nearly the whole width of the path, and she is standing on the top of the bulb that forms its body, all pale ivory with streaks of gold, like it's cut from decorative stone. 

And it's not alone.

In front of her, another jellyfish rises to the same level, and then just a bit higher, pushing upward until it forms a platform just ahead, using what seems like a thousand tentacles to hold itself in place.

She takes a leap of faith and lands on the second jellyfish. It hums contentedly and its tentacles shudder slightly, as if to tell her she’s done well. A third floats up from the ground ahead to form the next step. Each time she leaps, she’s rewarded with another note in the song echoing through the water, and another step is made, until she’s nearly at the surface.

The ground beneath her is steeply sloped - she can step off the last jellyfish and walk right up the beach, coughing the water out of her lungs, and with it, spiders: millions and millions of spiders. They are no longer black, but thousands of colors, every color she can imagine and more, all glittering in the sun, like little piles of living gems spilling from her mouth and nose. 

As they disperse, they reveal something:

A stone, no bigger than her fist, shaped like an upside-down pear. It is irregularly faceted, and deep red in color. She tries to pick it up, but it _buzzes_ at a frequency that’s outright painful to the touch, so she slips it into the pocket of her over-skirt to carry. 

Arrive with one stone, leave with another. 

When she turns back to look at where the water laps against the shore, the jellyfish are all bobbing at the surface, flopping their tentacles into the air.

Waving?

"Uh... thank you!" Claudia calls back, to be polite. 

They hum their jellyfish harmony and sink beneath the waves once more.

Back on the beach, the rainbow spiders begin to scale a nearby palm tree and, working together, it is the labor of only a few minutes for them to spin the frame of a web about the size of a door.

When she touches the bark of the tree, a vividly citrine spider climbs onto her finger, does a few little circles on her palm, and then returns to the tree.

"Bye," she says. It’s a little sad, leaving them behind.

She could stay. She knows that she could stay, if she truly wanted to, but she doesn’t. And besides, she’ll be back. Everything will, eventually.

One step past the silk door, one breath, and then another, and she’s stumbling into silvery sand: the first beach melted like chalk in the rain, another takes shape before her eyes. 

An arm on each side of her holds her up. If the light in the sky is any indication, it's nearly dawn. 

“Dad!?” She asks. He’s on her right, on her left is some stranger, an old woman with the marks of magic on her face. 

A young man with no shirt drapes a crown of flowers on her head. All around, hoots and cheers go up to the sky. Mue's call cuts through, part of the chorus.

“What did I tell you!?” The old woman says over her head to her father.

Dad’s voice is an inch from her ear. “You’re safe. We’re all safe. Are you alright?” He looks down at her empty hands. “What happened to the stone?”

She nods. “You smell like... wine. What's happening? Is there food? I’m _starving.”_

The woman on her left says, “I bet! That Core Nexus’ll give you an appetite like nothing else! Don’t worry, there’s _plenty._ ”

Core Nexus? Is that what that was?

Alright.

She presses one hand to her pocket, against the odd shape of the crystal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for making it all the way through that. Normally I'd break up a monster like this, do some rearranging, but since all three events happen on the same night, I _had_ to keep it together!
> 
> I actually had this mostly done a couple days ago, and then I went, "as long as I'm doing a "Shakespeare's Fae" homage, I should give _all_ the Court of Misfits speaking roles special quirks!" And then I spent a day counting syllables and feet and things in a fit of self-indulgence.


	17. Book Five: Star | Chapter Eight: Asterism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.”_   
> **― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness**

**Book Five: Star**

**Chapter 8: Asterism**

“How many of them have been up the spire before?” In her peripheral vision, Amaya can see Gren’s lips moving as he interprets. Gesturing to herself, Janai, and Gren, she adds, “There’s the three of us, but what about them?”

She turns, and, the regiment of nine Sunfire elves all shake their heads.

“Before the change,” Kazi euphemizes, hands moving woodenly despite the joy on their face, “only chosen guards, ambassadors, or royalty would visit the summit. I admit this is an academic opportunity I never expected to have... Of course, duty will come first.”

Amaya doesn’t have anything  _ against _ Kazi, they seem nice enough and their excitement is charming, but knowing the king’s reason for sending them along does put a sour taste in her mouth. Xankar, in his growing anxiety, liked the idea of making it harder for the humans to communicate in secret, and had no qualms letting his logic be known.

Well, Amaya has made sure Gren knows that cuts both ways, that he’s expected to keep a close eye on Kazi and make sure there wouldn’t be any  _ miscommunications,  _ accidental or otherwise _.  _

(Gren, of course, answered, “What do you think I’ve  _ been _ doing?” Bless him. Amaya’s seen the way he looks at them sometimes, but it’s not as if _ she’s _ got any room to talk, and she has every bit of faith the sun will rise in the west before anything goes awry with his priorities.)

She’s musing to herself about how funny it would be for them  _ both  _ to get beguiled by Sunfire elves when they round a hill and much more of the mountain comes into view. There’s something different about it, lumpier and more jagged than she remembers, but she chalks it up to angle and lighting. It isn’t as if she has a perfect memory of what it looked like the first time. 

It isn’t until one of the protrusions  _ pushes off the cliffside _ and takes flight (startling her horse even at this distance) that all those little overhangs and nodules resolve all at once: not rock formations, but  _ dragons,  _ clinging to the side of the Storm Spire, so numerous they give the creeping impression of a hive of insects. 

Some of them blend much better than others, but once she sees them for what they are, it’s hard to believe she thought they were anything else. 

“That’s not going to be a problem, is it?” Amaya indicates.

Janai squints at the mountain, hopefully with greater odds than Amaya of drawing some meaning from it. 

“It is certainly unusual,” Janai assesses militarily. “Such young dragons do not ordinarily socialize outside their kin. It is more peculiar still that Zubeia is permitting this.”

“Unless she doesn’t have a choice,” Amaya theorizes. Thoughts of whatever trouble Callum is in still have her in the mood for worst-case-scenarios.

_ No international incidents,  _ she tells herself every time she thinks about splitting off from the group and riding west like the wind itself is chasing her. Besides, they  _ have  _ a plan to get her home. She’s just impatient to get on with it. 

Human and elf alike sit straighter in the saddle as a cloud of wary vigilance descends on the group. 

They’re close to where the climb begins in earnest when one dark red dragon launches itself off the stone and vanishes into an opening above. By some unspoken consensus, they all wait for a moment, watching the dark spot.

It doesn’t take long to re-emerge in a harsh dive.

Amaya makes a wide gesture. The humans scatter at the command, all but Gren, the stubborn idiot sticking by her. Janai peels away to make room, but her group holds its shape. A moment later, Amaya sees why.

Without the broken horn, she’d never recognize Pyrrah, but with it, she’s unmistakable. Amaya makes a circle in the air with her arm, a signal to pull back together, and a backwards palm telling the little retinue to hang back. The field signs are her own design -- well, hers and Sarai’s, anyway -- and they haven’t failed her yet. 

Pyrrah presses her body to the ground, revealing the harsh color-contrast of Ibis, sliding gracefully down the edge of a wing. 

“I didn’t dare come down by myself,” he says, leaning on his staff. He keeps turning back to the spire as he talks, forcing Gren to interpret. “I do not know what brings you here but I cannot _ begin _ to tell you how relieved I am to see you, to see  _ anyone  _ answer the call.”

“Call?” Amaya asks. She shoots a look at Janai, who is equally confused.

“It’s  _ them,” _ Ibis indicates to the spire. “They’re here on orders from Sol Regem, as near as I can tell. More of them arrive every day, or at least it feels that way. They leave, they return, it’s hard to know what they’re doing.”

“The Sun dragons, I understand, but why are young _ Earth  _ dragons taking orders from Sol Regem?” Janai presses.

Ibis only shakes his head. “I know only that as long as Queen Zubeia remains within the spire, they are calm, but when she tries to leave… they don’t like it. It isn’t an attack, exactly, but--”

“She’s under house arrest,” Amaya concludes. She’s heard the name _ Sol Regem _ in Lux Aurea before and figured out he’s a dragon, but he’s spoken of with such reverence, she didn’t realize he was a living being, she imagined he was some kind of ancestral or godlike figure. It’s strange to hear them discuss him as though he’s an officer, or a judge. 

Even if he is, what authority could he claim over a queen?

Skeptically, Amaya adds, “And you don’t know  _ why?” _

“I have my theories, but…” Ibis glances back up at where the mountain vanishes into clouds. “We should not tarry.”

His statement is punctuated with a hot grumble from Pyrrah that pushes steam from her nostrils and rattles Amaya’s chest like distant drumming.

“You want us to ride up with you?” Janai confirms. 

“Best not to risk doing otherwise,” Ibis says, posture making him look more like a butler than a mage.

In the end, Pyrrah has to take three trips to bring everyone up. Ibis goes with the first set and Amaya and Janai ascend only once everyone else is safely at the top. Above the clouds, four Sky dragons young enough to be smaller than Pyrrah circle the summit. Surely those ones, at least, are on the queen’s side.

“Tell her Pyrrah thank you and sorry,” Amaya indicates to Ibis, once his spell lets her breathe again, “this must be a lot of work.”

“She volunteered,” he assures her. “She’s been here all this time, though with little interest in whatever Sol Regem has to say. Something about past mistakes, and the  _ least she could do.  _ I’m not clear on the details. Truthfully, we don’t get on.” 

“But she carried you?”

“Because she spotted _ you,” _ Ibis explains. “I can’t imagine she would have done, otherwise.” 

As if it explains anything, Pyrrah nudges Amaya and Janai with her extremely  _ warm  _ nose. It gives the impression of friendliness, though it’s impossible to interpret with any certainty. Having gotten attention, she makes deliberate eye contact, turns to the entry cavern, and then returns the weighty look to Amaya in particular, all with a palpable sense of expectation.

For her last trick, Pyrrah gives Ibis a dry glance and takes off again, the rush of wind in her wake nearly knocking Amaya to the ground.

“Do you see?” Ibis’ shoulders sag in exasperation. “She’s trying to recruit new Dragonguard. I thought perhaps you were among them. As soon as  _ they  _ arrive,  _ I  _ can go. I never meant to stay this long to begin with.”

Janai catches Amaya’s and does the sign for Skywing, paired perfectly with a sarcastic roll of her eyes.

“At any rate,” Janai says, “It doesn’t sound like Queen Zubeia’s got much time for conspiracies. Come on, it sounds like our mission is not quite what we expected.”

“Sorry, much time for-- _ what--? _ ” Ibis protests, agog, as Janai pushes past him and strides through the dark archway, trailed by both elf and human soldiers looking around with respectful fascination.

“You heard the lady!” Amaya jokes (though only Gren seems to find it funny) and brings up the rear of the procession inside. “Go get us an audience!”

The interior of the hewn palace is much as Amaya remembers: beautiful, cold, thrumming with veins of magic, and constructed at a scale that makes her feel like a rodent scurrying around a giant’s floor. 

Being back here is a flash of a memory that adds Soren to the list of her concerns. For all the polite distance he tries to keep, she still thinks of him after all these years as something like  _ bonus-nephew.  _ It can’t be easy, the way things have been. She has faith in him, she knows good instincts when she sees them, but she worries still.

There are too many of them to take over the Dragonguard rooms, but more than enough space for Amaya’s five soldiers and Janai’s nine to set up tents in a secondary antechamber so spacious it might as well be outdoors to them. She’d planned to have them down on the ground, but the precarity of the situation makes it seem considerably safer this way. 

“Do you think we can make a fire in here? It  _ is  _ all stone,” Amaya points out. “That doorway leads outside. We could set it up near there.”

Pity they don’t have Callum to help them get the breeze going to take the smoke away. Maybe Ibis would oblige if someone asks nicely enough.

“Too cold to go without,” Janai agrees, nose wrinkled more petulantly than Amaya’s used to seeing on her. “I liked it better here in the summer.”

“Perhaps we should check with Queen Zubeia first?” Kazi suggests, pushing their glasses up their nose. 

“Not sure about _ your  _ military,” Amaya says, giving Kazi a pat on the shoulder, “But in ours, we have a saying: sometimes it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.”

That gets a subtly wicked smile out of Janai, for which Amaya is proud of herself. No sooner do they begin to settle than Ibis comes to retrieve them, grumbling something no one else comments on, but the movement of his lips gives him away, at least in part: “--apparently look like some kind of personal attendant--”

To say the atmosphere in the nest-chamber is  _ charged  _ would ordinarily be a metaphor, but in this case, it is uncomfortably literal. The air smells astringently of electricity. Amaya mercifully cannot hear the sound, but Janai’s ears tip backwards protectively, and in response to Amaya’s questioning look, she leans in close (still doing things like that, still forgetting that if she wants to be discreet she can just mouth the words and save herself the trouble) and describes a high-pitched whine. 

Amaya’s careful not to make contact with anything, reminded of childhood winters scraping across a carpet in stocking feet before touching something (usually a doorknob or her sister) and getting a shock, complete with little flash. The whole room feels like the moment before the zap.

Queen Zubeia seems initially happy to see them, at least enough to engage in a few pleasantries. (Amaya feels compelled to comment on Prince Azymondias’ growth, his feet adorably too big for his body and his head nearly on a level with her own) Overall, though, the meeting is short and cast with the heavy shadow of Zubeia’s isolation. 

She’s tired, frustratingly cryptic, and what she does say is confusing, full of un-interpretable words and cut-off ideas. Gren is forced to finger-spell so much of what she says, it’s hard to keep up. Amaya has to double-check his interpretation when he transmits a part about  _ Sol Regem  _ being angry over a lost mirror. Do dragons even use mirrors? She’s never seen one here. It never seems like the right moment to ask for clarification. 

Amaya doesn’t rule out the possibility that Zubeia might be covering embarrassment or fear with her vagueness, or that she might be missing some information herself. Any or all of those things could be true. 

It’s a relief when they’re dismissed.

The moment it’s over, Janai pulls Amaya and Gren away from the chamber door.

“You want to change the plan,” Amaya preempts. If it were something personal, Janai wouldn’t have dragged Gren along, and if it were any less secret, she’d have done it inside, out of the wind. 

“Don’t you?” Janai hisses back. “Doesn’t this seem  _ important?” _

“I was so out of my depth in there, I couldn’t see the surface of the ocean for how far it was above my head,” Amaya returns, hands moving in irritated jerks. “If you want me to stay, there’s a  _ lot  _ you’re going to have to explain. And I’m still going to need to get a message to Callum and Ezran, no matter what. I promised Sarai I’d always be there for them. You of all people know what that means.”

Janai and Gren both focus on something over her shoulder, she whirls around to follow it.

Ibis has hesitantly accompanied the young dragon prince into their bubble of secrecy. The prince opens his mouth in a cry Amaya can’t hear, and wouldn’t be able to understand even if she could.

“My apologies for the eavesdropping, but Prince Azymondias wanted me to convey that he would indeed appreciate it very much if you stayed, and in return he may be able to assist you, as far as communications with the young humans .”

* * *

Soren never gets sick on the trip across the small sea -- not so much as a little headache -- and while it’s not like he has a storied history of issues with sailing, all he can think is  _ of course.  _ Of  _ course _ Xadian sea-serpents could magically pull a  _ magical  _ elf boat in such a  _ magical  _ way that it just cuts through the water smoother than any horse he’s ever ridden. (He spares a thought, then, for the  _ second  _ of two horses he’s left upon reaching impassable terrain east of the border.)

It’s annoying, is what it is. It’s the same way he felt at the spire, and the same way he felt when Claudia showed him that stupid little living puff-ball she found on the march: an irrational pulse of offense, as though it’s just  _ rude  _ for Xadia to be this way, so vibrant and flawless.

Maybe he’s just jealous, but there’s a lot to be jealous of, and it feels justified.

Both he and Raum are exhausted enough to spend the majority of the trip in various stages of sleep, which Abis doesn’t seem to mind. She furnishes them both with some kind of cold, fishy broth each time they wake. It  _ tastes _ decidedly mediocre but  _ feels  _ great to drink, filling Soren’s muscles with warmth, soothing his stomach, and clearing his head all at once. 

At the far coast begins an expanse that their map knows only as  _ The Far Reaches.  _ It looks so small, on paper, but as they approach it, the truth is disheartening: the real thing goes on and on forever, roadless and open and irregular, like someone took all the furniture in a vast room and threw a sheet over the lot. 

“You have my great thanks,” Abis says as she guides the boat to nestle along the shore. “I hope that debt is repaid. Here -- for your travels.”

She passes them each a pink, rubbery sack like a waterskin, the brine-smell of the contents suggestive of the same cold soup they had in the boat. Soren’s grateful for that, given the task ahead. 

An unfolded plank sees them safely to dry land, and at her ululating call, Abis’ serpent buddies whisk her away into the mist.

“So,” Soren says. 

“So,” Raum answers, almost playfully. The sleep must have done him good.

“I don’t know what you’re so happy about,” Soren grumbles, wincing at how petulant he sounds. “Look at all this.”

“I’m looking,” Raum says, hand on his hip, squinting in the hazy cloud-whitened sunlight. 

“And you’re not… I don’t know, intimidated, even a little? I mean, this isn’t even like a needle in a haystack situation. This is like a needle in a whole  _ barn _ full of hay.”

To Soren’s eye, the smear of ashes where he marked Claudia’s position at the time of the spell represents, by itself, an area so large he has no idea how to avoid getting hopelessly lost, let alone conduct any kind of effective search. 

Raum leans over his shoulder to look at the map, and the smudge, and then out at the landscape. 

“I don’t suppose you have a compass,” he asks, their faces so close that for a moment, Soren forgets what a compass is. “I guess I should probably know from the sun or something, huh?"

“I--yes. Yeah. I do. Um,” Soren pats pockets until he finds it. “Here.”

He watches Raum look from the compass, to the map, to the plains ahead, the grasses bending wavelike in the breeze for miles. 

“So at some point, she was here?” Raum points at a spot on the map just to the south of the mountain range. “Looks like all we can really do is follow this river. If she’s still out there, she’s probably sticking close to water too, right?”

Of course he’s right. The alternative is too unpleasant to contemplate, so they swing to the north, keeping the river on their left once they reach it. The world is wide and open and they slip into the easy synchronization of a shared trek across the countryside. 

Still, something about going  _ north _ feels completely wrong. The jangling hiss in Soren’s head since crossing the border makes it almost like walking slightly uphill, even when he’s not.

Without much in the way of landmarks, they default to frequent short rests by the riverbank instead of one long one. Where the current is slow, they even take a little time to bathe, jumping into water so freezing cold it shuts down any thoughts at all, let alone any embarrassing ones. Goosepimpled, shivering, and laughing at themselves, they pick up the pace through the afternoon to warm up.

Over the course of almost an entire day, they don’t meet a single creature bigger than a large rabbit, which Raum drives out of its cover on cue so that Soren can bean it with a rock. It’s the first fresh meat in a while, which makes it  _ delicious,  _ despite neither of them being much good at cooking.

There are no elves, nothing. It’s not a desert, but it seems practically deserted. 

“You think there’s anyone out there?” Raum asks later, focused up on the clear night sky and the billions of stars in it. 

“In the… up there?” Soren asks, looking up as if he’ll see a face, or something.

“Yeah, you know… if any of those dots are a place like this, with people on it, looking out, seeing our dot, wondering if we’re here. I think about that a lot.”

“You asked me this before,” Soren recalls.

“I did? I don’t remember. What’d you say?”

“I don’t remember,” he says with a chuckle, because it’s true. It was a long time ago. He only remembers the mental image he got from the question. “Be cool if there are though, right? What kind of places do you think there could be? Like, a forest world? Ocean world?”

“Nah.” Raum laughs and shakes a bit of hair from his face. “Look at  _ this  _ place. We’ve got mountains and rivers and oceans and all. What are the odds it’d be just one thing?”

“Maybe we’re not so bad off,” Soren says. “Could be worlds full of monsters.”

“Worse than dragons?”

“You never know.”

“Could also be ones with no dragons, or elves, or anything. Just regular people.”

“My old teacher said there used to be elves connected to the Stars, a long time ago,” Soren recalls. “I wonder if  _ they  _ knew what was out there.”

“Used to be? What happened to them?”

Soren shrugs. “Beats me. Just what I heard. Not like anyone’s ever seen one.” After a beat, he adds, quietly, “I mean, you haven’t, right?”

“Never.” They take several steps before Raum speaks again. “Be kind of scary if we  _ are  _ all that’s out there. Everything’d  _ really _ be up to us. Only thing pushing back the dark.”

Silence wraps around them both.

* * *

Up to her elbows in gray slurry, Claudia recalls the unicorn incident and wonders if this isn’t the curse of her blood: a tendency for practical goals that seem simple on the surface to spiral out into fractals of complication. 

She just wanted to try and write a letter back to mom.

There’s no way to describe the smell outside of precisely what it is: a bunch of mashed up tree bark that’s been soaking for days in water with burned-and-ground-up seashells. It’s not good, but it’s not bad either. 

One hand securely gripping each side of the wooden frame, she pulls the screen gently up through the cloudy water, shaking gently side to side as she goes, until it’s up above the surface, bits of fiber caught in the fine, taut netting.

Her hair falls from her ears and into her face, but not into the water. 

Iberrine laughs, bouncing a cute fat baby on her hip. “Bet you’re glad for that haircut now.” 

Her own pulled-tight brown pouf of a ponytail seems at least as practical, keeping the frizz of her hair out of the reach of tiny hands.

“You can say that again,” Claudia mutters.

Since losing its color, the white side of her head has been difficult to manage, drier and less pliant, but Eywesh’s incredibly helpful daughter-in-law, Iberrine, offered a solution. After helping Claudia chop off everything below her chin for the first time since she was little, Iberrine taught her to mix a paste out of a powdered leaf and citrus juice. 

The result looked like goose poop and smelled like hay, but it went a long way to restoring the texture. In the process, it dyed the white parts a vivid red that lights up in the sun.

She hasn’t decided yet if she likes it as much as the purple tips, but it  _ is  _ a pretty cool look, no matter how startled her father was when he saw it.  _ Claudia _ likes it, and that’s what matters.

Dad’ll get used to it.

_ “Bet you’re glad for that haircut now,” _ Iberrine says again, mirth in her voice suggesting she can’t resist the low-hanging fruit of a joke

Claudia snorts laughing but  _ must  _ get her revenge for one that cheesy, and flicks the surface of the fiber-water at her. 

“Hey!” 

“No less than that deserved,” Claudia asserts

“Probably true,” Iberrine says, wiping her face. The baby giggles at her predicament, which Claudia finds validating. “How many pages do you think you’ll use? For the letter?”

“Depends if I can get any of them not to rip.” Claudia frowns at the frame that tore her last three attempts at pulling a page off it. Mindful of the messaging she’s received so far, she asks, “That’s not a waste, is it?”

“We just recycle the ripped sheets back into the mixture, no harm done. It all becomes paper one way or another.”

“I just have so much I want to say. I feel like I could fill a whole book.”

“Not sure your little bird would appreciate carrying one,” Iberrine points out. 

The next few pieces go smoother, not ripping at all. When she asks Iberrine if paper-making is women’s work, given that she’s so far only seen women doing it, Iberrine responds that it’s not quite right, rather women do most of the writing and record-keeping, and one simply must come before the other.

Whatever’s next, it’s apparently something forbidden to babies, because they stop by Iberrine’s home and the little boy is handed off to his father, Eywesh’s son, who Claudia knows now as “Quanah.” (Before that, he was “long-hair-good-cook-guy.”)

In the end, she doesn’t actually use the same paper she makes -- with the pressing and drying, it would take ages. The system, she learns, is a rotating one. Anyone wanting to write stories, record information, or pen a letter uses the pulp trough and deckle to pull the same number of pages as they plan to take from the central supply. 

“And that’s where we’re going now,” Iberrine says.

Claudia guesses this system must encourage brevity, but when she sees the library they call  _ athenaeum,  _ she realizes that she has seldom been more wrong.

Up to now, she’s seen two types of buildings in New-South-Sedj, the private and the public ones, all clustered around the switchback path that leads up the hill at the southwest side of the island. 

The homes are small and almond-shaped, with squat little walls and arcing roofs made from the opalescent shells of some colossal ancient mussel dredged up from the seafloor. Many of the ones lowest on the slope stand empty, the population not what it once was. (It’s clear why it was so easy for them to be invited to stay.)

The public structures are closer to what Claudia’s used to seeing in villages, made of stone or logs or both, but the athenaeum is another matter entirely.

The athenaeum is made of _ bone. _

Shining in the sun and the only building more than two stories tall, the arrangement of colored windows giving the impression of eyes, like those of a jumping spider. And, if it is spider-like, then the little stilts that hold it up off the ground would form numerous legs. 

She doesn’t need to be told this is a place of honor. 

“What kind of animal did those come from? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that big.” She’s seen drawings of amblers, but how could one live here? Don’t they need wide open spaces?

“It was a Levaia,” says Iberrine, “the biggest sea creature we know of. I’ve never _ seen  _ one, but the journals say a deceased Levaia washed up on the shore the day our forefathers arrived. They believed it was a gift, from the Core. They thought she called them here for safety when Elarion was destroyed, and gave them the material to begin a new life. Those windows are made from scales, see? And the runner-birds that came to scavenge what _ they _ couldn’t use were their first animal friends.”

“I… know someone, back home, who can talk to animals, like Eywesh can, but I’ve never heard of anyone else doing it. I kind of thought it was just a myth, until I met him. Is it common here?”

“Rare, but not as rare as that. It’s so interesting that there are other humans out there, you’ll have to tell me more about what they’re like.”

What to say to that? She’d probably feel the same way, if their positions were reversed. She  _ does  _ feel that way, about Manawa. Not sure where to begin, Claudia lets it drop for now, stepping gently up the steps and through the massive single-bone columns that flank the entrance.

In the foyer, she is told to remove her shoes and change into a pair of soft deerskin slippers.

More scales adorn the cavernous inside of the building, hanging from the ceiling among the mix of magical lights and skylights, throwing a soft smattering of colored spots onto the white walls and shelves. 

They aren’t alone. Desks and chairs sit among the stacks of leather-bound tomes and curls of rough paper, several occupied by writers and readers, and people move among the shelves, leather-clad footsteps as quiet as bird’s wings.

Toward the back, past a wall of books, is storage for  _ jars -- _ some filled with liquids, others with powders and parts of creatures, some things familiar and others completely alien, and none of it buried in a musty dungeon but displayed openly, well-organized and labeled under the light. 

“This stuff is just for anyone?” Claudia asks. 

“Of course. It’s like the paper. Contributed to by everyone who uses it, to everyone's benefit -- including the creatures.”

“Wait-- including--”

“The only ‘price’ is record-keeping. Imagine you do a spell to repair a broken pot using the tail of a sunnewt, but it doesn’t work. You write it down and consult with other mages, check the records, and discover that this tail was--”

“Elderly,” Claudia says, unable to resist showing off that she knows this one. “They have to be of breeding age.”

“We’ll have to put you to work right away,” Iberrine says, and Claudia gets the sense that while it’s friendly, it’s not exactly a joke. “I’m not sure how it is where you’re from, but potency is one of the things we strive for most. The island is small, and if we’re going to survive without end, we have to ask Manawa what it is we may have, abide by the answer, and use its gifts as efficiently as we can.”

“When you say  _ ask… _ ”

“Literally, in some cases, but not others. You don’t have this tradition, I take it?”

Embarrassment creeps in, though she isn’t sure if it’s warranted. “Everything’s so scarce, we… well I guess that means we should do that  _ more?  _ But… Not really. Going across the border is dangerous, I don’t think anyone ever  _ asks  _ anything for anything.”

“Your ancestors, who left Elarion--” Iberrine looks back toward the literature room, as though it has a voice and ears. “What do you know of them?”

“Not much,” Claudia admits. “I know they weren’t allowed to bring books with them.”

According to the history texts, some risked it anyway, some were even killed for it, and others started rewriting what they remembered as soon as they settled. It adds up to so little, with so many gaps, and even then, more still was destroyed in the mage wars. Mom used to tell her that if humans ever got to return to their homeland, they could use magic to understand better what things were like back then, and the idea has captured Claudia’s imagination ever since.

“Our ancestors saved as much as they could carry, but it still feels paltry,” Iberrine says. “That’s... why we write so much. Any understanding lost is a waste. We humans are the youngest creatures, even the flowers know more than we do, in some ways. There’s a lot of catching up to do.”

“I… can read those, right? What they brought with them? If… they’re still around?” Claudia looks around, as though someone is going to tell her it’s not allowed.

“Naturally! We copy them by hand when they start to fall apart, of course.” Iberrine laughs “And even if you can’t speak to animals, there are still ways to hear what the island is saying. If you stay, you’ll learn.”

Just beyond a carved archway it is a kind of storeroom, the walls either covered in or  _ made of _ more of those scales. Close up, they look like some mixture of steel and glass, and their size makes it even harder to imagine what the full Levaia might have looked like. Here, there is paper, lots of it, and little clay bottles of dark brown ink that smells like the sea.

She keeps the first letter to five pages, vague and cryptic enough that if someone other than mom were to read it they’d hardly be able to make sense of it, sacrificing clarity for security. 

The  _ next  _ letter, though -- if mom gets it, and responds, and there’s reason to believe they can communicate somehow without putting one another at risk? (As _ifs_ go, it's a doozy, but hope is tenacious.)

Claudia’s going to have to get very good at making paper. 

* * *

The leaf-pile is taller than Ezran, a perfect mound of autumn-colored scraps raked up from the courtyard lawn by the groundskeepers, so large that a gust of wind could easily send half of it tumbling down the nearby well. Where they’ve all gone, he isn’t sure -- perhaps a lunch break, or maybe off to get the wheelbarrow to cart the leaves away. 

He hesitates. He doesn’t want to ruin their hard work, but the sweet compost perfume reaches him from here, and he can already hear the snap and crunch that they’d make beneath him as clear as if he’s listening into the future. A pillowy landing, perhaps a snail friend somewhere among the layers? It’s difficult to resist. 

Ylai looks at the pile, and then at Ezran. His green-tinged lips stretch into a smile, and while he doesn’t really have any hair where his eyebrows should be, there’s a scrunching of his forehead that looks like a suggestion. 

He bends over and whispers in Ezran’s ear. 

They’re out here for exercise and training, it’s uncharacteristic of Ylai to be so irreverent, but Ezran knows better than to question a bit of good luck, especially when everything else is so frightening and difficult. 

One moment of guiltless peace, that’s what Ylai is offering him. Water in the desert.

Savoring it from the get-go, he slips his shoes off and backs up for a running start. Bait serves as his rapt spectator as he sprints across the grass. At the key moment, he  _ launches  _ himself through the air with a whoop of pure joy.

It’s a perfect landing, smack dab in the middle of the pile, which welcomes him with a firework burst of dead leaves in the air.

A giggle bubbles through him as he stretches out on his back, escalating to full-scale laughter when a grumble and rustle herald Bait’s journey through Leaf Mountain to reach him.

Above, framed by red and orange curls, the sky is a perfect sharp blue interrupted by a mission of clouds drifting insubstantially with the wind. If he doesn’t sit up, he can imagine it’s the past: Callum’s not trapped in his room recovering from some mysterious dark magic disease, but out here in the fresh air, waiting his turn to jump next, and dad’s just out of sight too, watching them from the bench with a mug of hot cocoa.

Ezran closes his eyes, and for a second, it’s so real. Not a care in the world, safe and happy and together again. He could stay like this, and dad would pick him up and carry him inside, careful not to wake him, even if he was only  _ pretending _ to have fallen asleep.

A tear pulls free of the corner of his eye and drips onto his ear before he even realizes what’s happening. 

“I’m sad,” he mutters to himself, holding Bait tight in the crook of his arm. “and lonely, and scared, and I miss dad.”

After a pause, he changes his voice a little and says to himself, “Ezran, I hear that you’re sad and lonely and scared and you miss dad, and those are normal feelings to have, and it makes perfect sense you’d feel that way.”

Turns out  _ big feelings time  _ helps a little, even when it’s imaginary. A loving headbutt from Bait doesn’t hurt, either. 

Above him, Opeli’s face blocks the light. Her hair stretches down toward him. For a moment he imagines how funny it would be if she could control it, grasping hands on skinny tendrils, and he’s not sure who smiles at who first, but they both end up smiling. 

“How are the leaves today?” She asks.

Ezran sits up and shakes a few out of his hair. “Crunchy,” he says. 

“Can I sit here?”

He nods, and gestures as though the now badly-disorganized mass of leaves is a specially-designed settee. Opeli is game, and gathers her skirts so she can sit just as primly as she would on a cushion.

“How’re all the… justice things?” Ezran asks. 

“It’s a lot of work,” she admits, “but I’m happy to be doing it. Scyntyllah says we’re already showing that it’s possible to move toward a human land that can live in peace with Xadia. Runaan has been a big help.”

Ezran looks around, and lowers his voice. “You’re not scared of him?”

“Hmm, it’s true that he’s…” Opeli looks away, at the clouds, at the changing guard on the courtyard wall, and then back. “Focused. That’s not scary to me, though. It’s nice to have someone to talk to, to help  _ me _ stay focused too. We can all use someone to keep us on-task sometimes. Are  _ you _ scared of him?”

“Well… Kind of. You know, ‘cause--”

“Of course.”

“I know we’re supposed to be letting go of things and moving forward.” Ezran scratches Bait’s head, a comfort to them both. “I guess some things are harder than others.”

“It’s okay if that takes time. It’s only natural,” Opeli assures. “And until you feel more comfortable, it’ll only be  _ me _ reporting to you. Promise. That’s… actually why I came looking for you.”

Bait’s color wobbles a little orange and then back to yellow. Ezran knows the feeling -- he likes Opeli, and it’s nice to have her and Corvus around when he wants a familiar human face, but he’s starting to learn the signs that grown-ups exhibit when they’re about to say something they know he won’t like. People and animals aren’t so different, really.

Ezran nods. 

“We’ve noticed a…  _ disturbing  _ trend in some of the recent assessments,” Opeli explains, hands palm-up in her lap. “Firstly that they seem to be gradually increasing, not decreasing, the way we’d hoped. And secondly that recently, since Callum returned, some of them have been…  _ bringing him up.” _

“I’d really appreciate it if you would just say what you mean,” Ezran says, measuredly. Teasing out meaning between the lines isn’t impossible, but it’s tiring. 

She nods. “Of course. What I mean is that while I’m sure he never intended this, his actions have clearly inspired others to see dark magic as a little more  _ normal  _ than they might otherwise.”

Her words tangle inside him like a cat’s hairball. “So… more people are going to do it? Because Callum did?”

“It’s actually worse than that,” Opeli says, and Ezran slouches in displeasure. She says, “I’m sorry. You wanted me to speak plainly.”

“No, I do, go ahead.”

“The people accept Scyntyllah, but prevailing sentiment remains in your favor -- Katolis eagerly awaits your rule, which is good.”

“But?”

“ _ But,  _ it means you have considerable...  _ cultural influence _ . Do you know what I mean by that?”

“I think so?”

“Everyone knows you’re close with Callum, and between that and your father’s well-known affection for Lord Viren in the past, there are growing rumors that your family, and consequently  _ you,  _ secretly endorse dark magic.” Opeli lets out a quick, hard sigh, clearly relieved to have it all out. “Even now.”

“I don’t!” Ezran shouts, a little too loud, getting the attention of the gardeners on their way back from lunch. He’d meant to have Ylai clean up the leaves by now. 

“Of course not,” Opeli says. “I know that, and you know that, but they… don’t. And it’s having an impact.”

Ezran digs his fingers into his hair for a moment, and then lets go. “What can I do?”

“We’re working on a speech. It would have you condemn Callum’s actions, and put a little distance between you, in the eyes of the country.”

_ “What?!” _

“Temporarily, until he’s better, and then we can work toward getting things back to normal.”

“I’m not gonna turn my back on Callum!” Ezran backs out of the pile as though she’d brandished a weapon, dragging leaves with him. “It sounds like you’re saying I’m supposed to stand up and lie to people, and say bad things about him. Because he’s sick? How is that  _ good?” _

Opeli gets up slowly, politely. “I know it’s difficult. Please do trust me that people who know you _ will  _ understand. I’m sure Callum will understand too, when he’s healthy again. I’ll have the first draft sent up to your rooms. If you still refuse, I understand, and I will explain that to Scyntyllah on your behalf if you wish. I ask only that you read it, and take some time to consider the idea.”

Her head is bowed, and her cheeks are flushed -- with what? Anxiety? Embarrassment? He’s seen the way people acted with dad. It isn’t easy to disagree with a king, and he supposes that goes just the same for a king-in-training. Besides  _ that,  _ if he says no,  _ she  _ has to go say no to a dragon for him, and even with a nice dragon, that has to be a little scary.

It’s hard not to be sympathetic. 

Ezran doesn’t want to seem childish, or mean, so he controls his voice as best as he can and says, “I’m sorry I yelled. Thank you for being honest with me. I’ll think about it.”

“No, no, I apologize for alarming you,” she says. “Thank you.”

The entire time, Ylai has stood to the side like a statue, unmoved and unmoving. Ezran wonders if he’d speak out against  _ his  _ brother. Probably would. Knowing his brother, he’d be fine with it, too. They’re both so dutiful, so disciplined. Ezran wishes, not for the first time, he could be more like Ylai.

What kind of king is he going to be if he can’t?

“I should round them up?” Ylai asks, of the leaves. 

“Yes, please,” Ezran says. 

He didn’t realize  _ how  _ Ylai would do it until he does it: Ylai draws a small ball bound in twine from his pocket, and cuts the twine. What bursts forth looks like potpourri, but when Ylai says the magic words, all the little pieces glow and rush forth. 

Each leaf they touch leaps up like a tin soldier in a midwinter play coming to life, and in turn, touches other leaves that do the same, until the whole pile is animated, standing on broken stems and edges. 

Ylai commands them in Draconic, and they crawl on top of one another, rebuilding the pile even tidier than before, and at his last word, they go lifeless once more, losing only a little organization in the process.

Behind him, the gardeners applaud and laugh. 

The potpourri is as inanimate as the leaves, though. 

“Ylai?”

“Yes?”

“Did you just use up a really cool magic thing to fix a leaf pile for me?”

Ylai laughs. “You are kind. Do not worry. My brother will make another for me.”

“Oh. Well, I guess that’s okay then.”

“Shall we train as planned?”

Ezran nods. He does have to be more disciplined, after all, and every little bit counts.

* * *

Little Neolandia is farther outside the city than Rayla expected, and in the end, is really too much effort for a visit with no purpose other than satisfying her curiosity. Still, once she gets started, she doesn’t turn back. The road is long and full of people in colorful clothes, pushing wheelbarrows, leading heavily-laden donkeys, and carrying bursting sacks that bend them over at the waist from the exertion.

When she reaches it, she understands why: there’s nothing to buy and sell there, no supplies, no money to use, and very little activity. What it lacks in crowding it more than makes up for in drab seclusion.

The huts were obviously made by dragons, mages, or some combination of the two, resembling heaps of magma solidified and hollowed out. They lack openings for windows or chimneys, leaving the occupants with the choice between cold darkness, or homes full of smoke.

Laid out in a loose grid, there is no rhyme or reason to the space between them -- too far for neighbors to be in arms’ reach, but too close for any feeling of luxurious privacy, with no central plaza or market to grow around.

Running along one side, a rushing tributary seems to have been considered sufficient water supply for what looks more like a military encampment than a town.

All in all, it gives the distinct impression of being designed by someone who’d never once _ met _ a human.

There’s no way to guess what sorts of interactions these people have had with elves, aside from the fact that this, here, is the most unwelcome she’s felt west of the border since the treaty. It’s deeply awkward, the way people look at her as though she’s some kind of ill omen, scurrying inside on her approach or staring at her in a way that feels like a curse.

She doesn’t stay in Little Neolandia more than a few hours, but Little Neolandia stays with her long after that.

This is what Rayla does now: watch, listen, and gather information that twists her up inside, because  _ Runaan  _ is causing this, not by himself, but still. Her own family. Each new piece of the picture she reveals makes her want to lift the cover a little further. She has an  _ obligation  _ to bear witness to what lies underneath. 

Sometimes it comes without her even trying, like when she unwraps her order from a fish shop and finds, inside the parchment, an image block-stamped between two layers of wrapping.

A human mage (she assumes, from the colored-in eyes) stands in the center, between a dragon in mid fire-breath and a cowering little human girl with the emblem of Katolis on her cloak. The mage heroically brandishes a large book as a shield against the flames. 

At the bottom is harsh lettering: 

> WITHOUT DARK MAGIC, WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO HER?

It’s more artful than the first one of these she’s seen, that one pasted in the window of a smoke-filled inn dining room, unsubtly depicting a dragon with gaping nostrils and dripping fangs, holding a ripped flag between its teeth. No words needed for that one, apparently.

Elves in the Silvergrove tell stories, she’s heard them all her life. One version was of a family who wished they could feed all their children, and their desire was granted when the eldest died and therefore no longer had to eat. Another spoke of a wife who wished her husband would come home early from a mission, and he did -- because he’d been horribly wounded.

This isn’t what she imagined, standing in the shadow of Avizandum’s remains all those months ago. She was sure if they could just right this one wrong, it would open a door long wedged shut, give everyone a chance to take a breath and realize the war really could stop.

And so it did.

Rayla wished for peace, and she got it. 

On one hand, she wouldn’t go back and change a thing. Zym never asked to be part of this, and a baby belongs with its mother. They _ did the right thing.  _ Still it’s hard not to feel a little responsible.

And what about Callum? He was willing to fight and even  _ kill  _ his  _ own kind,  _ that’s how deeply he believed in that wish. How much does he know of the shape of this peace, beyond the injustice done to him directly? 

How much should she tell him, the next time she visits? She can’t lie, but the last thing she wants is to deepen his despair.

All this _ looking _ is useless if she doesn’t do something. 

Callum put  _ everything _ on the line for Xadia. He gave up everything he thought he knew, turned his back on his people and his culture, and put his own life on the line more than once, just to right a human wrong.

How can Rayla face him again if she can’t say she’d be willing to do the same? 

Someone has to be drawing these images, someone has to be carving them into blocks, printing them, and dispersing them. People _ are doing something. _

Rayla could be part of it, couldn’t she? She could be useful, she could make a difference now just like she did before. Just like then, she can’t do it by herself, but enough drops make a flood, and these leaflets and posters mean the rain must already be starting. 

To start, she’ll have to figure out where it’s coming from. 

* * *

Some part of Aaravos knows where he’ll find Viren from the start. A sense of  _ assuming the best _ leads him to look other places first -- the shell cabin, the wood path \-- but in the end it is exactly as he expected. He pushes aside a tangle of broad leaves and comes out onto the dunes.  _ It’s _ farther down the curve of the strand than before, which is a little disorienting, since Aaravos can’t see  _ it  _ at all.

As if reading his mind, Viren doesn’t move when he says: “It’s not always in the same place.”

“What  _ is _ this fixation?” Aaravos picks a dried fiber of stem from his hair. “The way it was explained to me, if you  _ were _ to somehow go through, it seems  _ concerningly _ unlikely that you would--” 

Aaravos stops himself. 

Viren doesn’t turn around. The island is so alive. Branches shake in the wind or under the feet of animals, ferns rustle, snakes interrupt the moss, and the tide covers the pale sand in a breathy rhythm -- it makes Viren look odd by comparison, petrified in place.

“Or... is that the point?” Aaravos hears his own voice go bitter, like tea steeped too long. It should be a warning, or an expression of concern, but it mocks instead. 

“No,” Viren answers straightforwardly, unconcerned with Aaravos’ tone. “I don’t think so.” 

There’s relief when he finally turns, wringing his hands, as if he’s broken free of something he was tangled up in. Aaravos’ eyes drop to where Viren’s pressing one thumb into the thick white rope of scar tissue on his palm, and Viren sees him seeing.

“This all must seem rather petty to you.”

“Not really.” Aaravos doesn’t elaborate.

“It’s hard to tease apart,” explains Viren.

Aaravos looks out over Viren’s shoulder, past wherever the door is today, at the white froth peaks in the water as they appear and disappear.

“Rain falls on the mountain, and the mountain gets wet. Does it matter if someone thinks the rain chose to fall there? You’ve seen the _athenaeum_.” 

They get results here, is what Aaravos means to say. The rest is of little consequence.

“Claudia won’t tell me what she saw. Or at least, she won’t tell me anything that makes any sense. You know how she can be.”

“You’re jealous.”

“Don’t oversimplify. If I’m going to serve something,” Viren’s words come out like sharp rocks clattering down a hill. “To--to have  _ been  _ serving something since I was thirteen years old… is it really that strange to want acknowledgment?”

“Perhaps not.”

“And what they said, about dying, about human souls.” He changes the topic erratically, not quite pacing, but close to it.

“Ah,” Aaravos recognizes. He is hardly the first human to ask what it means to be one, though he certainly has a compelling jumping-off point. 

“They knew about this… Seventh Arcanum.” Viren puzzles out loud. 

“By virtue of living on top of it,” Aaravos says, feeling a peculiar need to defend his own prior ignorance. 

“Claudia’s mother and I used to argue about this. The focus of her study was tradition. She did this demonstration once, at a conference I dragged her to. Two measures of water, one completely pure, one with a tiny amethyst in it. By magic, she cooled the two at the same rate. The one with the jewel froze much sooner than the one without, the ice forming around the stone first. By the time it was all frozen, of course, it was opaque, only the ice itself could be seen.

“Superstition and tradition, she said, was like that ice, spreading outward, and somewhere inside of it was a nucleus, a reason for being that could have great potential, but that if we dismiss the ice, we miss the jewel.”

“And what was _ your _ stance?” Aaravos asks, pleased with himself that if he had to bind himself to someone, it at least wound up being someone with a good voice and a way with an anecdote.

“I’m sure you’ve heard the joke about the cat in the basket,” Viren says.

“Have I?”

“It goes: There was once a cleric, who taught at a school where a stray cat lived. During meditation, the cat would distract everyone, and the cleric would have one of her students put it in a covered basket to silence it during the lesson. Eventually the cleric died, and one of her students took over the school, and a _ different _ acolyte would trap the cat each day. Finally, the _ cat  _ died. Do you know what they did?”

Aaravos grins. He has an idea of where this is going. 

Viren says, “They brought in a  _ new _ cat to be put inside the basket at the appointed time, to keep the routine intact. Centuries later, students of that academy write solemnly on the benefits to deep focus that come with putting a cat in a basket.”

Aaravos’ grin turns into a low, satisfied laugh, one without reservations. 

“If _ they _ found out, about… you know...” Viren speculates, voice low and secretive. He draws a line with his index finger across his own throat. “Whether there’s a jewel in it, or it’s just a cat in a basket, _ they  _ believe it. If a  _ single life _ characterizes humanity, then what am  _ I _ to them?”

“Exhausting?” Aaravos hopes his smile conveys the affection with which he means it.  _ Would they be so welcoming if they knew the full story  _ is a question that has hung about Aaravos’ mind like flies on a carcass since they arrived, but if Viren navel-gazes any harder, he’ll throw his back out. Best not to encourage him. “You seem to be in desperate need of a goal. I’ve come to ask if you’d like to take a trip.”

“Leave?” Viren steps back, giving Aaravos an up-and-down examination, as though this is a betrayal that will have tattooed itself on him. “Why? Where? What happened to this being paradise?”

“Oh, we’ll be back,” Aaravos assures, “just as soon as I am out of my _ prison.” _

“Right,” he says, as though recalling something forgotten. 

Something in the casual haziness of it sends a flash of anger straight through Aaravos’ temples, a headache like a needle stab, lightning that’s there and gone in an instant.

“Right,” Aaravos echoes thinly, his amusement deflated.

There’s no avoiding it: magic is likely to be a barrier. He’s fairly certain that wherever the rest of him is locked up, there’ll be no picking the bolt with a hatpin and walking through the door. There are alternatives to having Viren with him, but none of them are easier or more reliable than working together. Besides: if he’s honest with himself, he’d prefer to have the company, particularly with what he has planned. 

He has a theory, and he knows exactly how to test it. 

Either his test will be successful, and he’ll know precisely where he is and how to free himself (though the logistics themselves will still be a challenge)  _ or _ he’ll die in the desert -- and given the principles involved, there’s a non-zero chance it could be not merely destruction of the meat, but a true death. He’s fairly confident in his theory, but there’s no way to be _ sure.  _

Selfishly, he’d rather not be alone in such a case.

“I suppose I owe you that much,” Viren says, in the same tone of voice he once accepted baring his neck to Khessa. “It’s not the worst idea. If I’m going to be a hermit, I might as well make myself useful. I certainly can’t imagine I’m likely to be  _ recognized  _ as I am.”

The mental image of a griping -- or worse, silently resentful -- Viren leaving dutiful footprints in black sand is suddenly unappealing. 

“It’s an invitation, not a demand,” Aaravos hedges a little too harshly, backing suddenly away from his own objective just as it’s in his grasp. He knows he’s finicky. He’ll have what he wants the way he wants it or not at all. 

He tries to leave before Viren can respond, but Viren stops him. 

“No, I… just give me some time. A week or two.”

* * *

Ahead, the mountain range that stops above the ash-mark on Soren’s map looms larger in the real world, gaining definition and color. By the time the sun rises on the third day, they’re in the mountain’s chilly shadow until almost noon, able to spot areas of woods and clearings and stony ledges above. 

The open country makes progress feel slower than it is. By dusk it’s hard to tell if they’re within the smudge-zone or not, if they have to bend south yet or not, and Soren is pondering how to narrow the search when he remembers out of the blue--

“Oh, shit.”

Raum frowns. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just an idiot.” Soren rubs his face. “I completely forgot to tell you. With all that… stuff, it just…” He makes a gesture of something flitting away from his head. “Your family. They’re okay. Or at least, they were when I left.”

Soren watches Raum’s face for signs of anger that it took him this long to say something, but doesn’t find any. In its place is a series of strained, half-suppressed expressions, and a held breath that gives way to a huff of a relieved laugh. 

“I mean, when they didn’t show up at Doctrina Limen, I  _ hoped,  _ but…” He shakes his head. “What did you tell them? About me?”

Soren has no chance to answer that.

The colossal shape swings around the mountain. His gut catches on it before the part of him that makes words, instinctively calls it  _ threat,  _ before the rest of him can call it  _ dragon.  _

It’s just too big to be anything else. 

They’re on their feet, but frozen by the possibilities. The river isn’t even wide here, they could theoretically run in  _ any  _ direction, so they don’t run at all. It’s just as well, because it turns out to be  _ three _ dragons, first in a line, and then separating out into individual umbrellas of darkness, jagged against the sky. 

How? Why? 

Do they know he’s not forbidden to be here anymore? 

Is explaining that likely to help? 

Raum pulls him out of his trance with a literal yank at his elbow, but there’s no point. Soren’s seen what these things can do. Three dragons? If they want to kill them, running just means they’ll die tired. He must already  _ be  _ tired, enough that his vision’s going funny, because the mountain’s coming to life before his eyes and the woods are coming toward them a lot faster than they’re running.

The ground jerks away from their feet, sending them both flying. 

A swell rises from the earth behind them, and they go tripping down the brand new slope like kids playing on a grassy hill. It’s all Soren can do to tuck his chin and cover his head and hope Raum’s doing the same, wherever he is now.

Roaring follows a crash from behind. One of the dragons is clearly pissed, which seems stupid, because why are they doing this then, whatever it is they’re doing?

There’s a flash of gray-brown and just as they come to a stop, a scream -- words, but none Soren recognizes. Not Raum’s voice, and not his own.

Before they can even shake the dizziness enough to make a move, the ground splits in a ridiculous fissure, and swallows them both.

_ Now,  _ he’s seasick. 

A thin finger of twilight stretches down from the rift above, just enough to tell that the ground widens past the place where they fell, and they’re in some kind of hole, as if that wasn’t obvious either way. It’s not as deep as it felt like on the way down. 

Unsettlingly, it reminds him of a grave.

Little tremors shake dirt around them, and screeching dragon voices come closer, and then farther away.

“Raum?” Soren croaks. 

“Soren?” 

“Anything broken?”

“Don’t think so. You?”

“Aw, man!” Soren gets to his feet, patting a cold wet spot on his side. The ceiling’s just barely over his head. He grumbles, “I fell on my soup bag thing. Ugh, I’m gonna smell like fish for _ ever  _ now.”

“Oi!” A third voice pierces the gloom. “You’re okay! Thank the  _ mountain _ that worked. Only tried it once before.”

Undulating brownish-and-moss-colored light comes from a glass ball trapped in a circular metal cage. It swings freely in a hoop at the top of a metal pole, sending their shadows sweeping and jumping around the little cavity. 

The wielder of the staff is short and oddly-dressed, with a single horn like a growth of crystal, like Ezran’s new crownguard has.

“You’re Rootfolk!” Soren says without thinking.

“You’re human!” She returns kindly. 

“She’s what?” Raum’s frown is exaggerated in the odd light. 

“A kind of Earthblood elf,” Soren says out the side of his mouth, as if she can’t hear him. And then, to the elf, he says: “Hi, hello. Yes, we’re humans. I don’t know if you heard but there’s uh, supposed to be peace now, kind of, so if you could not kill us, that would… be... good.”

The elf splutters a high laugh, hard enough to lean on her staff for support. 

Raum mutters back to Soren, “Is it good when they do that?”

“You’re a funny one. Who’d you think saved you? If I wanted you dead I’d just have let the dragons at you wouldn’t I? Not that I would. Frankly I’ll take any excuse to ruin their day. Very territorial. If there’s supposed to be peace, I’m not sure  _ they’ve _ got the message yet.”

“Oh. Um, in that case, thank you.” Soren says, and Raum nods along.

“Good news is, they lose interest pretty quick if they can’t reach you. Bad news, there’s Moon dragons about at night as well -- more than ever, recently. Most of the mountain area’s infested. You’re lucky you got this far.”

“Okay--”

“Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Sal. I’m kind of like the leader in here. Well, not  _ here, _ here, but the city, just up that way, in the mountain.”

“I’m Soren,” he introduces, to be polite in turn. “This is Raum.” 

“Good to meet you,” Raum says, a flat mimic of folksy courtesy. 

The elf -- Sal, apparently -- goes quiet. She frowns, bites a gray lip, and stares into the middle distance.  _ “So-ren?” _

“Um. Yes.”

“Is that a  _ common  _ name for humans, by any chance?”

“Not… especially?” He feels a little self-conscious. “I mean, it’s not like, super weird, but--”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a sister?”

Soren just about collapses. His stomach goes hot and cold at the same time and he can’t feel his hands or his face. He almost forgets to speak, and he  _ absolutely  _ does not have the ability to be cagey, even if he wanted to.

“Yes. Yes! I--have a sister.”

“Black and white hair? Makes  _ fantastic  _ potions? Reads like it’s going out of style? Tells funny stories about you?”

“Yes! Exactly! That’s her! That’s Claudia! Is she okay?!? Is she with you?” Soren can hardly breathe. Raum actually puts his hand on Soren’s upper arm, to brace him.

“Steady, there. Claudia. Right. She was fine last I saw her. Stayed in the city for a bit, but left a while back. Said she was following some kind of humming noise she was hearing in her head, to the south. Might’ve been crazy, to be fair. But like, a nice crazy?”

_ A nice crazy.  _ When he finds her, he’ll have to tell her that one. “She was following the hum south?”

“Something like that.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.” If he’s hearing the same thing she heard after all, all he has to do is go after it, it’s the best news he’s gotten since he started this.

“You can come and stay for a bit if you like. Lay low, sleep in a bed, wash off the fish smell and all that. Promise it’s nicer then this hole.”

“Thank you, but no, I have to catch up with her. But… Raum?” Soren looks at him. Even the dim glow of Sal’s stone is enough to spark in his eyes, like they were meant for low light. Soren tries to arrange his face to make it seem like it won’t absolutely suck if Raum agrees with what he’s about to say. “Just ‘cause I got you out of that place doesn’t mean you have to stay with me. Clauds is a diva, if she liked it there, I’m sure it’s great. You could…”

He tilts his head toward Sal, to indicate:  _ have a little underground vacation?  _

Raum looks like he’s thinking about it for maybe a second, but no more than that.

“I’m not letting you do this alone,” Raum says, so firmly it would indeed seem like madness to press him. “I’m going with you. Only question is what we do about the dragon situation.” 

They both look at Sal, and she looks back and forth between them. There’s something in the shadows on her face, but if it’s awareness, she skips politely over it.

“Morning,” she advises. “ _ Early  _ morning, right when the sun starts coming up, the Moon dragons go to sleep, and especially now it’s colder the Earth dragons don’t really get going until the ground warms up. Start running south and you’ll probably be out of their range by the time they’re about, if you’re not too slow.”

“Seriously, I can’t thank you enough.  _ Literally _ a lifesaver.”

“Like I said, always a pleasure to disappoint some dragons,” Sal jokes. “Here, let me just--”

She draws a rune in the air, and shifts the wall of the hole toward Soren and Raum, making them stumble backward. 

“A ramp,” she says. “That’s not too steep, is it?”

Soren and Raum look at one another, and they both shake their heads. 

“You know,” Soren says, “There’s a Rootfolk elf in the human kingdoms now, helping the dragons keep an eye on the future king. She’s pretty nice too. That’s how I knew, ‘cause of--” he gestures to his own head. “Same kind of horn situation.”

Sal makes a choked scoffing noise. “Helping the dragons? That’s a good one.”

“Huh?”

“Rootfolk are about as likely to help a dragon as they are to sprout wings and fly. I don’t know what this lady you met is doing, but I’d bet all the gems in Kannati she’s not  _ helping the dragons.” _

“Huh,” is all Soren can say, again. He files that away. 

“Not like we all know each other, but what’s her name? We were all scattered a long time ago and I’m… kind of trying to reach out to the others.” There’s a scratch of vulnerability in her voice for the first time. “ _Someone_ might want to know what she’s up to.”

For a second, Soren hesitates, but Sal’s been so helpful. “Narampu?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell, but I’ll keep her in mind. Anyway, like I said. The second you see light up there--”

“Make a run for it,” Soren nods.

Somewhere in the shadows there must be a passageway, because she disappears down it, the ground spilling into itself and filling in behind her. Without her and her glowing ball, the darkness deepens to where there’s hardly a difference between the shadows of the hole and the shadow of Raum standing next to him. Soren tries not to think about bugs.

“Talk about luck,” Raum says. 

“Chyeah.” Soren exhales the moment of chaos still stuck in his throat. “Weird, though. Never thought I’d meet an elf that likes humans and hates dragons.”

“Sounds like you already have,” Raum points out, sitting down against the ramp and leaning back to look at the little sliver of world above, apparently not caring if he gets dirt in his hair. “Back in Katolis.”

“Oh. Yeah, Ezran’s new crownguard. I don’t know. She seemed to do what they wanted. If she’s not helping the dragons, what is she  _ actually _ doing?” Soren sits down next to him, because it seems like the thing to do. Worry seeps in like the damp through the soil around them. 

Then again, Narampu and this  _ Sal _ elf seem to have affection for humans in common. Maybe it’s not the worst thing for Ezran to have someone like that around.

“You never told me what you said,” Raum says. “When you went to the farm.”

“Not much. I couldn’t go alone. I think they suspected I was…” Soren sighs. “Doing exactly what I ended up doing.”

“You protected them.”

“Tried to.”

“You  _ knew _ they were helping me,” Raum clarifies. “You protected them anyway.”

Soren’s brain tangles up, goes for a jokey  _ you’re welcome  _ and a genuine  _ of course  _ at the same time, and he ends up shrugging not-at-all casually and mumbling something like,  _ “nnyrc’ourse.” _

“When I ran into you, I thought--” he huffs, and the loose smile that comes with it can be heard more than seen. “Well, now I don’t want to say what I thought. Just that I… stand corrected.”

“Corrected?”

“The world is trying  _ so _ hard to beat the good out of you, and it’s still not enough.” 

Soren’s not sure how to feel about the fact that that might be the nicest thing anyone’s said to him in a long time. 

As cold as it was above-ground, it’s even colder down here, and neither of them are really dressed for the weather. Clothes fit mainly for life next to a river of lava, Raum’s teeth are the first to start chattering.

The fact that they can barely see one another makes it less weird when Soren slides one arm out of his jacket and stretches as much material as he can over them both. He doesn’t bother saying anything about it, he just does it, and if Raum thinks anything of it, he doesn’t say either -- he just shifts closer, so the too-small fabric can work a little better. The warmth saved and shared from the way they’re sitting probably helps more. 

At some point, Raum dozes a little, head tipped forward on his knees.

Soren wonders if there’s still any chance for them, or if the inescapable scrape of time has filed off the edges he once imagined might fit together. It’s been on his mind since the boat, the distant thought (underneath all his other worries) that they might have missed their shot.

The moment the light appears, Soren jostles Raum awake and they follow instructions to the letter. He follows the pull of the sound in his head, and Raum doesn’t question it.

Their breath puffs white in the air, legs and lungs working far too hard to talk, hurtling south through the dawn mist like arrows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with that, all the pieces are in their places for the next chapter: the season 5 finale!


	18. Book Five: Star | Chapter Nine: Syzygy Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“And what if I was only supposed to burn for a certain amount of time?" I whispered. "What if I was only meant to shine for a while?"_
> 
> _"Then you truly don't know what stars are meant to do."_
> 
> **― Karina Halle, Love, in English**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, I accidentally a two-part season finale.
> 
>  **Content Notice, because I'd rather spoil a little than accidentally trigger someone:** (slightly unconventional) self injuring behavior is described in flashback, not super directly but there is a little gore, and there is discussion of amputation and its aftermath, starting from the phrase "hidden in plain sight" and it remains a topic pretty much up to the end of part I, though you can probably pick up at "I get you" if you're trying to skip it. **Reader discretion is advised.**

**Book Five: Star**

**Chapter 9: Syzygy, Part I**

The Core stone cannot be held.

First, there is a buzzing discomfort. It ratchets up over a few seconds until it’s agony, rattling Claudia’s bones apart until she is forced to let go. She approaches it experimentally, asking her father to hold it, asking Aaravos to hold it, and (with Eywesh’s help) asking  _ Mue  _ to hold it, and lastly finding that even a mouse cannot bear to remain placed on it. 

Untouched, it seems to be inert, but with  _ any _ contact it is too volatile for anyone to even begin to guess what it can do. There are potion ingredients like this: substances that express their potential violently, unless bound to something else. Claudia considers what might serve that function here, a way to direct the energy as a fireplace reflects heat into a home while carrying smoke up the chimney.

That’s about where it hits her: there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

Staffmaking has been a lost art in the west far longer than she’s been alive. The _athenaeum_ gives up _ some  _ of Elarion’s ancient secrets, but frustratingly, much of it is more conjecture than fact. It’s also the most opaque writing she’s ever encountered, full of unspoken assumptions of knowledge long forgotten.

Two heads are better than one, though, so she brings the puzzle to her father. It turns out this is not the first time he’s given thought to the topic (having had his own staff to try and reverse-engineer, without success) and he’s full of ideas.

It is said that in Evenere, haggling over price is respectful to the shopkeeper, and accepting the first offer is  _ rude.  _ Her father is no different, in the marketplace of ideas. The first time they disagree on an interpretation of the text, Claudia stands behind her opinion, he counters, and it turns into a real argument, leading to a breakthrough. 

However contentious it might look from outside, Claudia is thrilled: it’s a sea-change, the first genuine budge of a once-thought immovable object. Whether it’s a purely internal shift, or simply that he isn’t immune to the way the others regard her since she came back out of the door, it’s a relief, a good kind of different.

Not only do they make a lot more progress as a team, but pulling apart that tangled knot together goes a long way to shaking off the cobwebs settling about him. 

When Aaravos returns from one of his island walkabouts, he is blessedly only a little smug about his own (admittedly substantial) contribution.

With an untested-but-promising plan in place, it’s  _ practical  _ labor standing between Claudia and an entry point to understanding _what it is_ she brought back with her, what she gained in exchange for trusting the call to destroy the security blanket taken from Lux Aurea.

The first step is the substrate. Of the limited options, she feels best about driftwood. It’s easy to acquire, malleable with the tools they have to hand, and the staff it creates might be lighter and less unwieldy than the eclipse staff was.

That burden made her stronger, but it’s time for something else.

Most of the driftwood on the island is in big, snarled clumps like giant’s tumbleweeds toward the west side of the north beach, not so far from the bridge where they arrived.

Early in the morning, Claudia wraps herself in a heavy cloak the color of smoky quartz and heads out with a small axe in hand, not telling anyone where she’s gone. It would be embarrassing to come back empty-handed if her mission were known. 

This way, there’s no pressure. It’s just a walk to the beach, and if she comes back with the material for a staff, all the better.

The clusters start as the soil gives way to sand. Some segments are on their own, but buried like teeth in a gum, so well-anchored they don’t even wiggle. That’s a loud  _ no, don’t take this one  _ from the island. Despite the chill, she shucks off her shoes and rolls up the fabric around her legs to wade into the surf and get a better look at a promising length.

Sand piles around the places where the wood disappears and nestles in its grooves, seaweed drapes melodramatically over snags, and shells rest in dips or places where branches meet, blocked from being swept back out to sea. Little crabs hide beneath the sand where the wood protects them from the notice of gulls, and fat, orange-bellied birds hop along thicker sections to look for scurrying insects, startling when Claudia gets near.

Cuffing her trousers, much as it seemed clever at the time, proves an exercise in futility when an unexpected wave soaks her to the thigh, laughing at her as it rolls away.

It feels more than a little silly, asking the island for permission. _Can I take this?_ She asks silently anyway, resting her hand on a branch, mostly straight with a little bulge and bend at the far end, worn smooth and pale by salt and sun. The birds weren’t hunting here, so it probably isn’t home to much, and it isn’t supportive or load-bearing, sticking out as it does from the jumbled sculpture. It won’t be missed. 

It is  _ not  _ the first or the last, and it is easy to harvest. 

Yes, the island seems to say, this bit’s fair game. 

She lets the next wave smack squarely into her hip as she swings the little axe one-handed and it lands where the branch meets the log with a ringing  _ doonk.  _ The wood is dense, the first swing barely makes it a third of the way through, which is for the best. It’ll be strong when she makes a staff of it, too. 

_ Doonk, doonk,  _ and then a final  _ doonk-snap  _ as the branch comes free. Claudia disentangles herself from the driftwood snare and heads up the beach before another wave can come for her. The branch is too long by far for now. Stood on end, the tip is as high as she can reach, but that’s alright. She’ll cut it to size later. 

For now, she wants to be polite, so she says a silent thank you. 

If it had gone any quicker, or if she’d have given up sooner, or taken the first branch she found, she would never have noticed the odd movement out across the surface of the water. Later, it will seem strange, how much could have gone so differently, for better or worse.

Until now she was so fixated on the harvest, she didn’t take the time to look out to sea. As the wind whips newly-short hair around her face, she sees what she missed before:

Two figures made miniature by distance, walking on the water -- or rather, on the bridge. 

Panic comes to an immediate boil in her stomach. Were they followed? Impossible. Barring the perpetual-edge-case that is Aaravos, elves aren’t meant to be able to walk on it. Humans, then? But how would a human have made it out all this way?

Unless... things have changed _ far  _ more back on the continent than she could have imagined. 

Her legs are springs, ready to flee like prey into the woods, but what then? Lead them straight to everyone else? Maybe she could convince them she’s alone here, let them take only her. Mind’s eye always too strong, she can’t stop the image of being dragged back and pilloried, figuratively or literally, and for what? Standing up for her own species?

It’s bizarre, this feeling like she woke one day to find those she cared about stricken with a mental disease that made them want to hand the keys of the kingdom over to the same people who killed its king.

If it were just Callum, she could chalk it up to an uncharitable assessment of fourteen-year-old boys and what they use to think with, but it spread beyond him, infecting an entire  _ other  _ nation that used to be an ally!

_ Won’t go to war _ indeed -- if she never forgets the look on her father’s face when he came back from the council, it’ll be too soon. It’s funny Claudia should despise someone she hasn’t met.

Resentment weighs on her like the water in her clothes. How dare they come here? Is exile still not enough?

Deep breath. She forces loose the grip of fear on her mind. Sand is an awful material to pace in, anyway. 

She looks out across the bridge again, ready to gauge how much time she’s got and wondering how odd she must seem to them, and everything changes.

Sometimes, if you know someone deep down, all the way to the core of who they are, because you see them every day (face, gait, posture, carriage) you gain an odd ability to pick them out at a distance or in a crowd, as if your spirit recognizes theirs even when you can’t see them clearly.

She flings the driftwood into the sand above where the tide reaches, and doesn’t even bother to put her shoes back on before stepping onto the smooth surface of the bridge and sprinting out across the water on the damp pads of her feet.

Soren must realize it then too, because he turns to his traveling companion, who lets go of his arm, and he breaks into a run as well. 

It’s farther than either of them realized. Her lungs burn from the effort, her nose full of salt spray. A stitch comes up rapidly in her side and she’s still got a ways to go, but he’s not slowing and she’ll be damned if she’s the first to surrender.

Distance is strange. There’s so much, and then there’s none, as she crashes into him. 

Soren absorbs the force with surprising grace and give, dressed as he is in leather instead of plate. He hugs her so tight she can hardly breathe, and despite how bad she needs air after that run, she squeezes him back instead of pulling away, finding him worryingly thin in her arms. He buries his face in her shoulder and she returns the gesture. 

They’re both sobbing, and laughing, a dense twist of inseparable, unnamed emotions bursting in every direction without concern for sense.

“Are you... seriously crying?” She teases through her own tears.

“Yeah.” He sniffs. “I’m crying ‘cause your hair looks so stupid,” he says, and she can’t see the smile but she can hear it.

“Well  _ I’m _ crying ‘cause  _ you _ smell like old fish,” she chokes out through laughter.

They pull apart. On closer examination, he’s sunburned. They must have gone over land and come down the cliff? She looks around his shoulder at the fellow making a slower approach. There’s something familiar about him, but she can’t quite place it, and then the light hits him a certain way, and it all comes rushing back. 

“Is that--”

“Don’t,” Soren warns under his breath. “Do  _ not  _ say anything.”

“It  _ is! _ What? Tell me  _ everything.  _ Are you two--”

“No! I mean, no. I… no. I swear--”

She swings her arm wildly in greeting and shouts, “ _ Long time no see!!!!!”  _

Whether her words make it without being swallowed by wind, she can’t guess. In any case, he waves back, which is when she realizes he’s only got the one arm. 

“Geez. What happened? With the--” Claudia gestures slightly to her own left arm, while he’s still out of earshot.

“I… didn’t ask?”

“Ah, so you  _ are _ still madly--”

“Claudia!”

“I’m just saying, that’s  _ unusually  _ considerate for you.”

“Hey! I’m considerate.” He mumbles quieter when he says, “Anyway, I’m not sure if he… feels that way.”

“He followed you halfway across a continent and onto a bridge he can’t see,” she counters. Boys are stupid, brothers even worse.

“It’s complicated, okay? Can we not, right now?”

Raum steps are delicate. Claudia frowns. “Wait. Soren. _You_ _can_ see the bridge.” She taps her foot on it.

“Um. Yeah?”

“And hear the--”

“The thing, yeah. I swear, I didn’t when you asked me the first time, I wasn’t lying.”

“Oh no, I know,” she says, nodding so hard she risks injuring her neck, a huge grin taking over her face, and it’s still not enough to release the excitement. A high-pitch squeal escapes through her teeth as she jumps up and down.  _ “Sor-bear! _ I have never been so proud of you in my  _ life! _ ”

“What.”

“What was it? And why? And what about after? Were you okay?” She looks at him like she’s searching for wounds. “I mean, you seem okay now--”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Soren. Only  _ humans _ who’ve  _ done dark magic _ can hear the…” She stops, not ready to give away everything yet, just in case. As happy as she is to see him, worries needle at the back of her mind. “What you heard.”

“Oh.”

“So?”

“So, nothing. It’s not a big deal. It was fine. I was looking for you, I did the thing you did. It worked, I threw up and passed out, and then I was fine.”

“Okay. Just… tell me you’re not here to…” Claudia takes a deep breath and a couple steps backward, out of where he could reach if he were to lunge, and hugs herself. She looks at the sea and not at him when she says, “I’m not going back there. Ever.”

“I… hadn’t thought about it.”

“You what?”

“I’ve been looking for you for… I don’t know, I haven’t been keeping track. Awhile. Point is, I never actually gave much thought to what I’d do when I found you. Anyway, I can’t really go back either, at least not right now.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

He drags his fingers through hair far messier than it used to be. Behind him, Raum is catching up.

Claudia drags a sleeve across her nose and swipes the tears from her eyes. She clings to this feeling of ebullient relief, commits it to memory, because she knows she’s about to ruin it.

“I’m so glad to see you.”

“But?” He guesses, intuiting the weight in her voice. “You still hate me?"

“Hate? No! No, never. I couldn’t.” She wanted to, at one point, but found it impossible. If he stays, they’ll definitely have  _ things to talk about, _ but one is more important than the rest to establish, before she even lets him take a step further. “Soren, I need you to promise me something.”

“What is it?”

“Promise you won’t hurt dad.”

His voice goes hollow and small. “Hurt… what do you mean? I don’t understand. Dad’s… Claudia, dad’s… Dad fell off a cliff. He’s...”

Good.  _ Good.  _ She lets out a deep breath. Whatever else happens, she knows this one thing for sure, at least. 

She shakes her head. “No, he’s not.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think you do.”

“How?”

_ “You know how.”  _ She doesn’t mean for it to come out defensive, but it does.

“No, I mean…  _ how.  _ When you fixed my legs, __ you told me it took a whole…  _ how,  _ Claudia?”

“Promise me,” she redirects.

“I mean, is he even  _ dad?  _ Or is he some kind of--”

“It’s not like that!” Her voice cracks. Trying to stop the geyser of emotion is even harder than she would have expected. Her voice wavers and hurries. “He’s alive for real. Promise me you and Raum aren’t going to do anything to him -- physically, anyway -- and... and if you leave, you won’t tell anyone we’re here.”

Raum catches up and looks between them, at Claudia’s pleading face and Soren’s stricken one, but he doesn’t say anything. 

_ “Please,”  _ she appeals. “I get why you thought you had no choice, then, but things  _ are _ different now. No one’s in any danger. You’d just be hunting an old hermit, for no reason. Not very  _ you. _ ”

If he tries to leave without promising, she has ideas. She can tell him it’s not only her on the line, that there are other people who’d get hurt. Worst case, she can get him onto the island long enough to secure the components for a memory spell. 

Luckily, it doesn’t come to that. 

“I promise,” he says, obviously confused and troubled but also serious as the grave. “That doesn’t mean anything else, though. I don’t want you thinking it’s gonna be--”

“I know,” Claudia hurries to say, and starts to lead the way back to shore. “You don’t have to… talk to him, or anything, if you don’t want to. I’ll handle it.”

He nods. 

“Long time no see you, too,” Raum is finally near enough to say, breaking the briefly awkward quiet. “I like the hair.” 

Claudia preens obnoxiously, in Soren’s direction.

“ _ You  _ don’t encourage her,” he scolds.

Claudia scoops up her driftwood piece on the way back. Sensing her tension, Soren throws an arm over her shoulder and gives it a quick squeeze. 

“Hey. It’s gonna be okay. We’ll figure it out.”

She starts laughing and coughing.

“Ugh.” she says. “The second we get you settled, I’m showing you where the springs are so you can  _ bathe.” _

* * *

Narampu knocks the way she’s been taught - two slow raps, two quick ones, and one slow one again, a rhythm that _ apparently _ means something to humans, or at least to Ezran. For most visitors there’s a process of door-guards checking in and doing announcements, but Narampu gets the shortcut: Ezran shouting a muffled  _ “OK!”  _ Through the door. __

At first glance, he’s nowhere to be seen, but a quick look around finds him standing before the big square mirror in the alcove where his clothes are kept, speech-papers in hand.

“Getting your practice in?” Narampu asks. 

Ylai bows to Ezran, gives Narampu an odd, almost reluctant look, and goes outside without a word.

“Trying, I guess,” Ezran groans. “It just feels bad. Dad always said you shouldn’t say things behind someone’s back if you wouldn’t say it in front of their face, and it feels like I’m doing  _ that  _ to Callum, even after they changed it. I know it’s important to make sure people don’t do dark magic, but aren’t they just doing it because they don’t see another choice?”

“Hm.” Narampu looks over his shoulder and skims. “You know, you don’t have to say  _ exactly  _ what’s on the page, here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what if you’re up there, making your speech, and you  _ forget  _ some words, and say your own words instead? Or you misremember a bit, and you  _ accidentally  _ say something different than what’s written?”

“I’d have to make something up. Opeli would probably be mad,” Ezran says. “And Scyntyllah might be, too.”

“Yeah, maybe, but what would she  _ do?  _ I mean, it’s not as if she’d stop you speaking. And if it was just a  _ mistake...” _

“Are you telling me to lie?” 

“No, no of course not,” Narampu grins. She couldn’t make it any clearer if she winked. “That’d be irresponsible.”

Ezran’s a special kid. Narampu realized early that any kind of proper manipulation would fall flat, he’s too attuned to the movement of emotion in a room, even when he doesn’t realize what he’s picking up on. She has to be honest, but not so honest she gets removed from his detail. 

She’s had a few close calls with Scyntyllah already, but dragons are easier. Most of the time, it’s about taking however low you think you have to bow and going a little lower than that. Flatter them, make them feel powerful, and they’ll miss whatever you’re doing with the hand behind your back. Sun dragons doubly so.

There’s a needle to be threaded here. It’s all about the little things -- the plausibly deniable ways she can  _ help  _ him  _ and  _ her goals just by giving him what he wants.

Be there, be true, and let him find his way to the reality for himself, that’s been her policy. The slow method has its own dangers (like the way Ylai’s had his eye on her) but if it works, the roots go deep. 

“Did you get anything else from Zym?” She lowers her voice. For now, this is their little secret. 

“Yes! I did what you suggested and I think it’s working. The contact is getting stronger.”

“What happened with what he said last time? About your auntie?”

“I… I miss her, Narampu, but I think they need her more than we do. She’s really smart, and I know she’ll do her best to make sure Zym and Zubeia are safe. And with Zym’s help, Amaya says we can have a presence at the Storm Spire and she can tell me what’s happening. I told her to stay. Or… I told him to tell Ibis to tell her to stay...”

Narampu moves a couple of jackets off the dressing-area chair so she can sit cross-legged on it. “That’s very brave.”

“I hope I did the right thing.”

“I brought something,” she says. “Callum asked me to get him books about the stars, and Star magic. Pickings are slim, but this one seemed pretty good. I thought you’d want to put a message in it.”

“Oh! Good idea. What should I say? I don’t want it to be too obvious.”

“Something about the speech, maybe? You know… non-obviously. Make you feel less guilty.”

“Hmm.” Ezran puts down the speech papers and takes the book over to his desk, writes, and hands it back. 

Narampu doesn’t check until she’s halfway to Callum’s room. It’s suitable: short, sweet, and unidentifiable as anything but margin notes. Kid’s getting better at this. When no one’s looking, she slips into Ezran’s old room and moves the secret board to the side. 

Callum is already on the floor, she can see his face appear through the gap. They wave at one another, but don’t dare speak out loud. Most of the time, the whole corridor is guarded. She can get in and out by telling people Ezran wants one thing or another from the stacked storage crates, and she likes to pick out random objects to sell the story. If she and Callum spoke, their goose, as the humans say, would be cooked. 

She slides the book through the gap with a smile. Callum is wild-eyed, and she doesn’t blame him, being cooped up that long. His star fixation is clearly escalating, but if that’s what gets him through this, who is she to say anything?

The moment she’s back in the hallway, Ylai shoves her against the wall. 

“Hello to you too,” she says with a smile. 

“I knew it!” Ylai says. 

“Knew what? That Ezran can never decide what he wants and doesn’t want to keep in his new room?” She brandishes a paperweight from King Harrow’s desk, initially rejected for the memories attached and now making a return as an excuse. 

“This is over.” 

“What is?”

“Your games. Clumsy, stupid, forgetting, soft. I know you pretend.” He presses harder against her sternum. He won’t break anything, but she’s not looking for a fight, either. “You help the young dark mage. He would kill you and cut you for parts, and you help him? Do not allow that I see this again.”

He lets go.

Well, that was nice while it lasted. 

Time to shift tactics.

“Did you need anything else?” She pokes at him as she dusts herself off.

“We’re wanted by the queen regent,” says Ylai. 

Was he looking for her to tell her when he caught her? Or was he stalking her and also happened to have something useful to say? Either way, she follows him out, across the new bridge, and into Scyntyllah’s chamber. Ministers Opeli and Runaan, as well as their strapping young deputy (the one that  _ didn’t  _ run off) are already waiting. 

“Our apologies, for lateness,” Ylai salutes. 

Narampu would love to just stand there, but she salutes as well.

It’s hard  _ not _ to look at Scyntyllah, presiding over the hall like a gigantic judge, not bothering to lower her head. 

Opeli clears her throat. “Reports have been emerging of hostile elements growing within the city. In order to better control the flow of people in and out, and to protect Ezran, the location of the speech will be here, in Queen Regent Scyntyllah’s chamber.”

“And--” Scyntyllah cuts in, her voice buzzing the glassy black floor. “On  _ my  _ back.”

“Very good, ma’am, understood,” Narampu says in her best scraping servant voice. Ylai shoots her a knowing, irritated look. She’ll have to get creative if she’s going to report the developments here. Was there a mole in the lower city? Perhaps someone rolled during a trial?

Seems this is how it’s going to be now. A show of force from the Xadian leadership, and her  _ partner-in-crownguarding  _ dogging her every move. 

Finally, a challenge.

* * *

Claudia assures Soren of several things on their long walk through the  _ freakishly _ huge trees -- trees so big that the regular-size trees growing in the patches of sun between them look like shrubs. Each promise comes true, even the parts most difficult to believe.

She walks them down the switchback (introducing a few people whose names he immediately forgets) to a dilapidated, overgrown cluster of odd little buildings. She explains why these ones are all empty, but it goes in one ear and out the other. 

He’s tired, and hungry, and the sole coherent thought he can hold onto for more than a minute at a time is  _ Claudia is alive.  _

There’s also  _ dad is alive too,  _ but that one doesn’t feel real enough to sink in.

The giant shells are cool, making roofs that dip deep over the short walls and peak off-center like shiny little hills. What kind of giant mussel thing must have lived in those once? He’s willing to bet it was  _ delicious,  _ whatever it was _.  _

From the sounds of it, there was some kind of deal: pick one of these, fix it up, renovate the neighborhood, and in doing so, earn your keep to live in it. Raum actually looks  _ excited  _ at the idea. They’re looking around the outside of one particularly in need of attention when his father appears, summoned by the hubbub. 

Claudia keeps another promise when she ushers them inside her own little hideaway before slipping out into the sunlight alone.

Dad’s face -- the brief glimpse Soren got outside -- sticks to the backs of his eyelids and appears every time he blinks: hair and beard grown out and shot through with white, former rich fabrics and pinpoint tailoring replaced with soft, loose layers in dark grays and browns.

_ Different,  _ Claudia said.  _ An old hermit.  _

Well, he _ does _ look the part, just now.

Soren takes the opportunity to snoop, much to Raum’s quiet amusement.

The ceiling’s a bit low, but the space is wide and almond-shaped, with a matching outhouse in the back. One apex is concealed by a soft gray curtain, probably a place to sleep. Near it, a rough table is home to a stack of papers and a few jars and pots and trays. Soren recognizes items he can’t recall names for, mentally categorized as  _ gross dark magic stuff.  _

A blackened fireplace occupies a large portion of the rear center wall, and below the curved chimney, a pot and teakettle hang next to a rack of meat drying in curls of blue smoke. A magenta fire burns beneath it all. Magic, of course.

It smells good enough to remind him how long it’s been since he ate.

The tiled floor is brightly colored and clean, but also cracked and irregular, with little sprouts growing up through it in places.

She’s made a good start to her renovations, at least. How long has she been here? He doesn’t need more than a glance to know this space is  _ hers,  _ that dad had no say in it.

Could Soren do the same? Could he make one of these into his own?

Raum opens his mouth to speak and Soren abruptly shushes him, because Claudia and dad are talking outside and eavesdropping is top priority. He indicates to the window with a pointed finger. Raum gives him a tight nod and they both lean toward it.

Dad’s voice is a muddled hiss, and Claudia cuts him off with an aggrieved sigh. 

“I know, I know,” she mollifies.

“That promise has come to… to _ mean  _ something to me, Claudia. I intend to keep it.”

“I know. Just not right now, okay?”

“I don’t understand _ \-- _ ”

“The same way we did.”

“That’s impossible.”

“No, it’s not. And there you go again--” Claudia doesn’t stop when dad tries to interject and there is a cluster of unintelligible nonsense as they whisper-talk over each other. Claudia prevails again at the end. “--near that point yet. All that stuff you told me about what grandpa was like, I would think you’d understand.”

Apparently that works, because there are no more words after. Soren and Raum scramble to look natural as Claudia sweeps back in. 

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” she says. “If he bothers you at all I’ll… I don’t know. Scold him. Tell Aaravos to scold him? It won’t take much convincing, the way they bicker recently. I swear, if I didn’t know better--”

“Who?” Soren frowns. 

“Oh. Right. Um, remember the purple caterpillar worm thing dad was talking to? During--”

“Little bug pal,” Soren says, feeling Raum’s confused stare on the side of his face.

“Yeah. Turns out that was an elf.” She tucks a bit of red-dyed hair behind her ear. He’s still getting used to it. With an awkward little laugh, she says, “weird, right?”

“I thought you said there weren’t any elves here.”

“There aren’t…  _ except  _ Aaravos.”

Raum cuts in. “They’re okay with that? The… people here? They don’t mind that he’s an elf?”

She shrugs and starts dishing out stew from the pot. “They know he won’t cause any trouble. It’s a long story. Like, really... really long.” 

“You use dark magic to make that?” Soren hears himself ask. Why does he ask? He doesn’t care, he’s starving and won’t turn down anything, but it’s hard to get certain voices out of his head, now. To show he doesn't actually mind, he adds: “It smells good.”

“Core.”

“What?”

“It’s not dark magic. That’s what Xadia called it. It’s core magic.”

“Isn’t it the same thing?”

Claudia pauses, ladle dripping. “Ye--nn--kind of--you know, I’m not sure how to answer that.”

“It’s fine,” Raum cuts in, and Soren agrees. 

“Ask me again in six months,” she says as she passes the bowls. Through her first bite, she says, “I’m still… kind of new to all this.”

The stew is hearty, full of purple and orange potatoes, and chunks of meat Soren wolfs down without even asking what it came from. He _truly_ doesn’t care, and by the looks of it, Raum doesn’t either. It tastes even better than it smells.

Over the meal, they get more of Claudia’s story, and even still more after, when she leads them up the hill to a busy village bath, where she leaves them. Soren nearly falls asleep in the mineral-white water no less than three times, and by the time they return, there’s a third house in the cluster -- the one they were looking at earlier -- glowing inside with fire, smoke puffing out the little chimney-hole in the shell roof.

Inside, a smaller pot hangs over the fireplace, with something fruity-smelling simmering in it, and on a dirty, 3-legged table is a large mound of fabric -- a few tunics and loose slacks in a similar style to the ones they saw on the road. There’s also at least four or five huge swaths of soft material in no particular shape.

On top of it all, a note says: 

_ Don’t get a big head. I had a lot of help when I got here, I’m just trying to pay it forward like I’m supposed to. _ _  
_ _  
_ _ P.S. - I’m really happy to see you.  _ _  
_ _  
_ _ P.P.S. - Remember that spell I said makes insanely comfortable blankets?  _

_ “Clauds--” _ Soren grumbles under his breath. To Raum, he stammers, “Sorry, I can go find her and get her to make another fire in… you know, another… thing. I saw what those bunkhouses were like and we've been on the road and all, I’m sure you’re dying for a little peace and quiet.”

“Don’t bother her. She’s done so much already. It’s funny, in my head, we were going off to rescue this little girl from mortal peril. Kind of ended up the other way around. Anyway, I’m pretty sure you’re not going to startle me every fifteen minutes to make sure I don’t have shoes on.”

“It’s not _ hard _ for her to make magic fire. I’ve _ seen _ her do magic fire, she loves it, she’ll take any excuse to--”

“No, really, I’d--Is it... okay? If I stay here?”

Soren uses every ounce of self-control in his body to will himself to stay cool when he says. “Yeah. If-if you want to. Of course.”

* * *

Rayla’s been following the young girl with the shiny brown hair on the basis of her scarf. In the growing resistance to the powers of Xadia, it seems,  _ knitting  _ is a weapon -- unexpected, but clever. She’s barely scratched the surface of the variations and meanings of the scarves on the street, the potholders visible from the windows of pubs, and the socks hanging out on laundry lines, but this one is blatant: repeating waves of red yarn, crossing one another along the length against a charcoal backdrop, with fringe ends dipped in dye the color of old clay.

She’s a mage, and an organizer, and didn’t  _ seem _ to notice she was being followed until now.

It’s Rayla’s fault, getting complacent, not even realizing until she goes back over it later the significance of the girl reaching into her pocket, muttering under her breath. 

She whips around, eyes glowing and haloed with sickly pinkish light. A second light-source shines through her closed fist. Rayla’s not sure she wants to find out what’s in it, but she can’t stop now.

“Find someone else to harass,” says the girl, in an accent Rayla’s come to recognize as Neolandian. “You won’t take me without a fight, and there’s no shame in deciding I’m not worth the trouble. You wouldn’t be the first.”

Rayla takes a quick step back and puts both hands in the air. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Great, neither am I. I’m -- like everybody else -- here to study, and practice, and protect myself and my culture and my people, after _your people_ turned our allies against us and your masters tried to starve us to death. So if you don’t want to hurt me, and I don’t want to hurt you, how about you run along and stop bothering me, and the rest of us while you’re at it?”

“Stop! You don’t--” Rayla huffs and gathers herself. “You don’t understand. I’m no’ one of them. I’m on the _ run  _ from them, if anything.”

“Sure, you’re just an elf who  _ loves  _ dark magic, are you? I’ll give you points for creativity.” 

“No--it’s not--it’s complicated--”

“Wait a minute. I know who you are!” It’s hard to read her expression with her eyes lit up, but her brows angle into a frown. “You’re the prince’s girl. I saw you. They were _looking_ for you.”

“Yes! Yes, exactly!”

Cautiously, she lets the spell drop, her eyes returning to a dark brown normal. “What do you want, then? You know I could trade information on your whereabouts for my own safety next time your friends decide to come after mine.”

Rayla steels herself. She  _ has  _ to be articulate here. This is her one chance. 

“I want to help.”

“So your prince got locked in a tower, and now suddenly you’re about the cause. How cute, but do you know what they do with the  _ rest  _ of us?”

_ Us.  _ He did dark magic  _ twice  _ and she talks about him like he’s… well, that friend of his, the creepy girl. It’s enough to make Rayla wonder what’s being said in the private places she doesn’t have access to. She can’t get impatient, or at least, she can’t show it. She knew there’d be a certain amount of  _ defensiveness,  _ and the only way she can disarm it is by not firing back. 

It  _ doesn’t  _ come naturally. 

“Look, I may still not be entirely…  _ comfortable  _ with dark magic, but I  _ know _ this… the way this is… is wrong. I care about  _ justice.  _ That’s why we returned the dragon prince, and that’s why I want to help you now. Couldn't an elf on your side be useful?”

“A disowned elf with no trust and no contacts? Sure.  _ Very  _ useful, for parts.”

“Hey--”

“Hey yourself. If you can’t take the way I’m talking to you now, how do you think it’s going to be when it’s a room full of us? If you actually give a shit, prove it. Ezran ’s going to make a speech soon. Be there. Have a reason we should trust you. Someone will find you.”

Rayla will be far away by the time she realizes that the girl didn't address Ezran by a title, and she will lose sleep wondering what that means.

* * *

Raum has never felt a blanket so comfortable and warm. He and Soren don’t need more than one each to wrap themselves in, which leaves the others to pad the floor in front of the magical fire, or get wadded into pillows. 

He couldn’t say how long he sleeps. Once he’s eaten and bathed, safe and warm there in the little house, a part of him that’s been ready for a fight since the day he was arrested finally disengages. It’s hardly twilight when he drifts off. When he wakes, he’s alone, the sun is high in the sky and he finds it urgent to investigate the outhouse. Fortunately, while it is home to  _ vastly _ more spiders than he would prefer, it is otherwise in acceptable condition.

There’s not much time to wonder where Soren got off to, before he returns. 

“Oh, you’re up.” Soren tosses a cooled-off boiled potato. It’s a terrible throw and Raum can’t catch it, but he does manage to bat it out of the air into his lap without it breaking, which is good enough.

“Sort of,” Raum says, still groggy, with a delayed response to Soren’s tension, on the crease between his eyebrows. “Where’d you get--is everything okay?”

“I couldn’t sleep. After you were out I went to talk to Claudia.” He sits on the blanket pile. “I told her about… what I told you, about our mom.”

“And?”

Soren winces. “She tried to write to her, not long before we got here.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I had to tell her though. We’re… still figuring out who’ll tell dad. It’s kind of stupid now that I think about it, neither of us  _ wants _ to do it but here we are, both trying to throw ourselves in front of the arrow.”

“At least she won’t be waiting for a response that isn’t coming. You ask her about…” Raum doesn’t know how to phrase this. Soren already looks exhausted and defeated and he’s afraid to pry. “What you heard? The… promise, thing?”

“It’s  _ his story to tell _ but she’s  _ sorry for her part in it, _ whatever that means. I guess I'm gonna have to find out myself. Here,” Soren pours a measure of black liquid from a flask into a tiny cup. “She does this potion, it’s great. Try it.”

Raum eyes it warily, but sips. It’s warm and bitter, but not unpleasantly so, and the smell is like roasted nuts and night-blooming flowers. There’s a spark of alertness at the back of his head. It skitters through his limbs, and the fog on his mind clears. 

“Wow.”

“Right?” Soren laughs. “I swear, she could sell that and be the richest--well, not anymore, I guess.”

They both look at the tiny flickering remnants of the fire in the fireplace, to avoid looking at one another. 

It isn’t as if Raum doesn’t have advice for him. Might even be  _ good  _ advice, though it’s always hard to tell before dispensing advice how useful it’ll be. The trouble is, in order to give it, he’s got to dredge up a past he’s never  _ voluntarily  _ spoken out loud.

If it saves Soren more time than it takes up, isn’t it worth it? 

And doesn’t he kind of owe the guy the truth about his disappearance, especially now, after all he's done to help? 

It’s _classically_ stupid, the way he looks over, and looks away the second Soren moves to look back.

He’s never been safer. That’s the deciding factor. If Soren decides he hates him after this, he can take him up on the  _ staying elsewhere  _ offer, and become one more person staying out of his way. 

No time like the present.

Deep breath.

“Soren?”

“Hm?”

“I don’t mean to make this about me, or add to what’s on your plate, but I want to tell you something.” Warm tension ricochets off the inside of his body. He feels his own face flush, which doesn’t help. “Is that okay?”

Soren’s frozen when he says, “Yeah?”

“I’m…”

> _ Raum is recently sixteen. Things have been changing for a couple years now. Between the realities of farm life and a cousin’s helpful tidbits, he thought he had a pretty decent understanding of the whole process, from the hair to the mood swings. He figured he was normal, like anyone else his age. _
> 
> _ The things on his _ head, _ though…  _
> 
> _ Those are unexpected. _
> 
> _ If he didn’t work with dairy animals, he wouldn’t even know what he was looking at. He’d think they were cancer or something, if he hadn’t seen them on goats who’d then be culled from breeding stock to avoid passing on the trait. _
> 
> _ Scurs.  _
> 
> _ Just little ones, thankfully, but still. Unpredictable as scurs are, he has no idea if they’ll get bigger or stay like this, and more important is the problem that they exist at all. In front of the mirror, he presses and shifts the buds around on his head -- like most scurs, they’re not rooted in his skull, which is a good sign for removability, but there’s no way he’ll be able to do it by himself, any case.  _
> 
> _ The missing finger on his left hand was supposed to be a quirk, a birth defect. The eye color was supposed to be a match for his long-gone great grandma. It could all be explained. It made sense. With this, though?  _
> 
> _ The picture changes. _
> 
> _ It’s going to be so embarrassing telling his parents.  _
> 
> _ Or,  _ no.
> 
> _ Only when he pictures how the conversation might go does he see how  _ profoundly  _ stupid he’s being, because he  shouldn’t be embarrassed.  _
> 
> They  _ should. _
> 
> _ Or at least,  one of them should. _
> 
> He  _ should be  _ angry.
> 
> _ Amazing, that the confrontation does not go well, starting from such an auspicious foundation. _
> 
> _ He’ll remember every detail forever: the smell of the sun on recently-threshed hay outside, the exact placement of the knots in the wood floor and the stains on his mother’s apron. The shattered pieces of the pottery he breaks. _
> 
> _ The look on his father’s face. (He knew, which only makes Raum angrier.) _
> 
> _ When there’s nothing more to say, he storms off to one of the sheds and rips the drawer out of a work table looking for the dehorning knife.  _
> 
> _ Raum has never been especially volatile or rebellious. Even when he is battered by a wave of sixteen-year-old angst, he usually lays out in a field waiting for it to pass, or, at his most violent, throws rocks at bottles out by the paddock fence. He does his work, he tries to be helpful, he keeps to himself. He daydreams and climbs trees and makes up songs in his head and sings them to the calves and kids. Except for the time he pushed another boy into a pond for making fun of his big sister’s stutter, he’s never willingly hurt anyone in his life.  _
> 
> _ He could hurt someone now. _
> 
> _ He could do  anything right now. _
> 
> _ He could breathe fire, or hot acid. He could simply explode, become a firework that blows this whole useless farm to bits and makes it rain three kinds of meat over the countryside. (The only innocent party here is his sister, who they swear knows nothing, and she’s been married and moved to Duren a year now.) _
> 
> _ It was  deliberate, too! He _ _ wishes he didn't know the circumstances. Si _ _ ck as it makes him feel, he actually wishes he could have simply been allowed to believe his mother had been taken advantage of.  At least then he could pity her, instead of having to look at her for the rest of his cursed, freakish life and know that-- _
> 
> _ And his spineless,  pathetic father  knew the entire time  and just-- _
> 
> _ It makes sense now, what he’s been told about the Moonshadow elves across the border: they’re devious and evil and you never know when they might strike, even  here  they aren’t entirely safe. He thought of them as practically imaginary, having never seen one  as far as he knew.  _
> 
> _ Yet, now he knows: there was one in the mirror all this time, hidden in plain sight. _
> 
> _ In a way, his  hand is _ worse _ than the scurs, because it’s right there, where everyone can see it, where he sees it every day, where he can  _ rely  _ on it. It has a kind of power over him that way, doesn’t it? At the height of his mania, he imagines it truly  belongs  not to him, but to his real father, a concentration of that seed, a sleeping demon waiting to rise and take him over and turn him entirely into one of  them,  and the scurs are just the  symptom! _
> 
> _ There's only one way to solve a problem like that, and it's at the source. He squeezes the dehorning knife tight in his right fist as he stares at the palm of that traitorous,  elvish left hand. _
> 
> _ In the future, he will not remember much: flashes of blood and the white cobweb-cords of fascia and tendons he’s only seen before on animals, and someone asking him  _ can you feel this  _ as he waits for them to do something that never comes. _
> 
> _ The next few days are a blur of the fever responsible for burning off most of those memories.  _
> 
> _ Later, he will be told they tried almost everything to try and save his hand, and -- perhaps ironically -- even dark magic was suggested, but the nearest mage was Lord Viren, in the capital: a risky proposition at best. _
> 
> "We couldn’t involve him,"  _ his mother explains. " _ He’s too canny, he’d see the truth and who knows what he’d do. And anyway, do you remember what you were like when we suggested it?"
> 
> _ He doesn’t, but it also doesn’t surprise him to learn he was agitated. He’s ready to choose the happy memories of Soren over the disgust he expects if the truth is revealed, and if they took him to Lord Viren, there’s no way Soren  _ wouldn’t  _ find out.  _
> 
> _ In the end, the infection moves faster than anyone expected. It forces a choice between his arm and his life, and good thing he's in no condition to weigh in, because he might not make the same call his family does.  _
> 
> _Recovery is a strange beast moving in fits and starts, and not_ _always forward. The healing hurts more than the wound did, and that doesn’t only go for the physical._
> 
> _ He learns strange tricks to manage the pain, like standing with the edge of a mirror to his chest, facing his good arm, so his mind is fooled into seeing it reflected on his left. When he does it, he can squeeze his right fist and release it, and the phantom on the left obeys the image in the glass. _
> 
> _ The irony of using an illusion to heal is not lost on him. _

Color has long abandoned Soren’s face, his entire body is a visible knot of horror and tension. This might be it: reality playing out Raum’s fears.

“I had no idea,” Soren struggles to say. Helplessly, he repeats, “I had no idea.”

Raum watches Soren’s eyes dart up to his head, and then shyly away. He answers the question Soren isn’t asking by parting his hair with finger and thumb enough to make one little nub visible, and then the other, asymmetrical and rough beneath his fingertips.

“Are you... in pain?” Soren asks. 

“The scurs? I forget they’re there.”

“No, I mean, you said you had pain, where your arm used to be. I’ve, uh, heard of that. From soldiers. Does it still… hurt?”

“Oh. Sometimes.  _ That  _ I can handle.” He chuckles. “When it  _ itches,  _ though...”

“Oh, oh no, that’s definitely worse,” Soren says, laughing slightly along, evidently relieved to be able to. “You know… you could have told me.”

“Even then?”

Soren shrugs. “Then? I don’t know. But now? You’re still the same person you were ten minutes ago. It’s like, if you told me you secretly hated bananas all your life.  _ You _ didn’t change. It’s just, same person, more information. Right?”

“Do me a favor?”

“What?”

Raum lets a real smile in, a big one. “Go back in time four years and tell  _ me _ that before I stab myself in the hand?”

When Soren smiles back at his slightly-twisted joke, Raum knows it’ll actually be okay.

“Why are you telling me all this now?” Soren asks. “I mean, I’m glad, er, no, not glad, but--”

“I get you." 

“So, why?”

“It was overdue.” Raum leaves out the part about Soren being able to guiltlessly storm off and never talk to him again, an uncharitable concern. “But also, I hoped it might help with your... situation. I was angry at my mom for a long time. Still am, at times. Like with the pain in my arm. It's there, and it's not. But we get along okay now, or we did before all this. She's probably worried.” 

When he was in Doctrina Limen, the old rage flared up so bad he thought it might consume him, like he could never tamp it down again, but like every fire, it burned itself out once it ran out of fuel. He can thank Soren for that, too.

“But you forgive her?” Soren asks. “Your mom?”

“I do.”

“How? Did she… say something? Do something?” There’s a little desperation in his voice, like he’s looking for a secret code to not feeling the way he does.

Raum looks at the coals. There was no single big conversation, no secret combination of words to make it all better. No catharsis, no epiphany, just time. How can he explain it? 

“I think it’s like the mirror,” he says, choosing his words carefully. “A trick I kept playing on myself until it turned into the truth.”

Soren frowns. “I... don’t know if that’s gonna work for me. I mean, I’m not trying to--”

“I know.”

“Thanks, you know? Really. Like,  _ really. _ It’s just that…” Soren trails off, dragging his fingers through his untrimmed hair and sighing. “I don’t... know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder to click the next button since this one's a two-parter.
> 
> Also, art, beautiful art! [Brodigies reunion!](https://bringmefleshandbringmewine.tumblr.com/post/629096671580766208/so-i-spotted-cinnos-beautiful-work-when-it-got)


	19. Book Five: Star | Chapter Nine: Syzygy Part II

**Book Five: Star**

**Chapter 9: Syzygy, Part II**

Viren’s choice of which home in the cluster to occupy was an odd one for him -- a moment of impulsiveness, of wanting to ask himself what _ he _ would do, and do the opposite, to prove something to himself. 

He’ll probably regret the risk during whatever storm season they have here, depending on how high the tides get. For now, though, he is pleased with the choice: it’s more soothing than he even predicted to look out his window at the place where the ocean crashes darkly against the bottom of the slope, covering the volcanic waterline with transient patterns of froth.

Though, it isn’t the  _ bottom  _ at all, is it? Just the bottom of the part he can  _ see. _ If he could borrow the gills and the buoyancy control of a Tidebound and stride into the sea, the mountain would keep going, down to the powdery floor of the ocean.

To make best use of the view, he’s discarded the rotted-out table and chair he found here and built new ones, customized to his noticeably-above-average-for-the-island height. They are simple, not particularly attractive, and still unfinished and prone to splintering if he isn’t careful. Still, there’s something unexpectedly satisfying about sitting on a chair he made with his own hands, no matter how it wobbles. 

He  _ will _ have to fix the wobble, though.

Placed by the window, it makes a perfect spot to watch the waves and sip the blended potion Claudia brought him this morning. She’s been making little alterations each day. 

The original formula, she says, was all about efficiency, but much to her simultaneous dismay and excitement, the locals have been giving her  _ notes _ . They want to take time out of their day to drink it, she reports, to enjoy it slowly while they talk or read, the way they do with their various teas.

This latest version, then, is less concentrated, with a more complex flavor -- earthy and to Viren’s delight, even a bit spicy. She may be making a statement about the critiques, in her judicious use of an endemic star-shaped herb which is highly divisive in the village, some despising the taste and others adoring it and no one in the middle. 

In any case, this is his favorite iteration so far.

As usual, Aaravos doesn’t knock, or otherwise make his presence known, he just lets himself in. Despite Viren choosing a home with a steeper rise to the ceiling, Aaravos still has to hunch to avoid scratching the shell roof with his horns.

“Oh,” Viren says when he sees the traveling clothes -- woolen breeches and thick-soled shoes, a heavy dark cloak with an enormous hood, and a slouchy, nondescript bag. “You didn’t say you were going.”

“I don’t expect you to come with me, since...” He glances in the direction of where Soren was last seen, as though he can see right through the walls. 

“Aaravos--”

“It’s for the best. Some things  _ may  _ have changed.”

“Have they?” Viren raises a skeptical brow. 

“Make no mistake, I am still seeking my prison, and after that… I want what I have always wanted. It might be best if I can make up for time lost to this _minor setback,_ and my methods would be perilous to you.”

“Aaravos… this may not be an ordinary friendship, but I consider it a friendship nevertheless. The way you’ve been talking--”

“This? Coming from you?”

“Still. I’ve been thinking,” Viren says. 

“Speaking of _ peril. _ ”

Viren shoots him a glare. He’s clearly feeling good about  _ something _ if he’s being this difficult. 

“I’ve been  _ thinking  _ since I decided to stay, about how we might keep tabs on one another.”

“If I succeed in my goal,  _ believe me, you’ll know. _ ” 

Recently, much of Aaravos’ time has been spent exploring the wilder parts of the island and reading ancient texts he must have held when they were new. In short, he’s been  _ eerily quiet. _ It reminds Viren of when Claudia and Soren were little. If they were shrieking and throwing things, that was fine. It was when they went quiet you knew they were  _ up to something.  _

This raw smile on Aaravos’ face is like a sharp rock thrown into the middle of that recent glassy lake. It makes him look predatory, in a way Viren hasn’t seen much since their shared abrupt failure.

“Still,” Viren says again. 

Aaravos chuckles and stands close enough to make Viren wonder: If, at six-foot-two,  _ he  _ can be loomed over, how must _ short  _ people feel when Aaravos does this?

“Viren,” he says, in that provoking way he has, “you underestimate our  _ bond.  _ I’m hurt.”

“Do I?”

“Stop shutting me out for  _ one _ moment.”

“I’m not--”

“You’ve been doing it since the beginning, since we drew blood together. Not always successfully, but moreso than I expected. Oh I’ve  _ respected  _ this boundary -- for the most part -- but if it’s  _ keeping tabs _ you want, it’s as easy as opening a door in that  _ wall  _ you’ve built around me.” To emphasize the point, he runs a finger along the side of Viren’s head, above his ear where his worm once sat.

Viren bristles. “If I don’t know the wall is there, how am I meant to  _ open a door  _ in it?”

“Close your eyes.”

Why is it so hard to refuse him? Even before the blood magic, his voice was hypnotic, even moreso now that he’s a physical presence in whatever room he’s in. After a mere token resistance, Viren closes his eyes.

Aaravos puts one broad hand on Viren’s head, the heel of his palm on his forehead, as if he’s trying to pick up a melon. The sensation starts around the middle of his hairline and skitters backward like several rapid needle-pokes.

“Do you feel it? The link?” It’s half-whisper.

“I… maybe.”

“Imagine it as a cord. As you are, you hold it tightly, dampening any movement. _ Let go.” _

“You’re always saying that,” Viren grumbles

“You’re always needing to.”

He tries to picture an imaginary hand, letting go, and then he feels it: a soft, tiny movement in the sensation, like he’s got a harp-string tied to the base of his throat and it’s been plucked. 

“Is this reversible?” He asks without thinking. “I suppose I should have asked  _ before  _ if there were  _ side effects  _ to this.” 

So much for learning from his mistakes.

“Perhaps.”

“How helpful,” Viren sneers. “Well I suppose this will do, anyway. I’ll know, if anything goes...”

“Awry. Yes. And much the way I  _ assisted you _ before, you may be able to _ assist me, _ if necessary.”

So _ that’s  _ what it was about. All at once, Viren feels played like a cheap lute,  _ again, _ as if Aaravos conned him into this while making him think it was his idea all along. He should have expected--! 

“Don’t look at me like that.” Aaravos  _ reads _ him. Is it the  _ open door  _ or just the same way he could do it before?

“You’re losing daylight,” Viren says, tamping experimentally on the metaphysical tether (that’s been there all along, he reminds himself) and making a mental note to see what the _athenaeum_ has about blood magic. 

Aaravos laughs. “Very well.”

They don’t say goodbye, because there  _ is  _ no goodbye. In a way, they aren’t parting at all. 

Once he is alone again (or at least, as alone as he’s likely to get) Viren decides he might as well finish his drink before he sets out up the hill, and that tiny decision makes all the difference.

A rap at the support beam by the door startles him. It isn't Claudia’s. 

“Hello, yes?” He sets down the cup again. It’ll be cold by the time he finishes it. 

“Dad?” 

It’s his own son, for crying out loud, he shouldn’t be so anxious about how he replies, but after the conversations he’s had with Claudia in the past few days, he feels as though he is in the woods, worrying the wrong step will break a twig and send Soren fleeing into the bush.

Ridiculous.

“Yes?” He answers, and winces at how impatient he sounds.

“Um. I… Can I come in? I think there’s some things…” Soren’s frustration with himself is audible when he stops and then says, “It’s about mom.”

* * *

It feels like a dream. 

No less than five sets of big black wings smack a fluttering tattoo against her window, and Sigrin thinks it’s lucky she happened to be in her little attic room at the time. Later, it occurs to her they’d have found her wherever she was.

It’s confusing, at first, but the moment she swings the window wide it becomes clear. They don’t all flood into the room -- only  _ one  _ does, and they all get out of her way so she can do it. 

_ Mue!  _

Mue, alive and well, with something tied to her foot. And she made friends? The others cry and screech and Mue calls back to them, and then they’re all gone, little razor cuts in the sky.

All except Mue, now climbing her nightgown and scratching the hell out of her arm and chest (as if she could care) and making unrestrained little honks as she headbutts Sigrin in the ear and picks through the hairs around her neck with her beak. 

Sigrin scratches her on the head and detaches the folded and packaged paper. 

For a moment, she’s confused. It makes sense that Mue would have failed to deliver the letter, but Sigrin doesn’t remember folding it like this, and the paper seems to have altogether changed its color and texture. 

The possibility it could truly be  _ from Claudia  _ doesn’t even occur to her until she lays eyes on the handwriting, at which point her legs stop working and she can’t seem to breathe. 

Mue makes a low hum right in her ear. 

“Yes, I agree,” Sigrin says, the way she always has no matter how opaque the bird-chatter. “I can’t believe this. You  _ saw _ her. You were  _ there _ with her, and--oh.”

Before she does anything else, she sets the paper on the table and digs into a chest of components she’s gradually amassed in the corner. First, she tosses a handful of nuts to keep Mue busy. Then, from a wet jar, she plucks a single blobbish ink sac from a moon-ringed cuttlefish, and a transfer medium: in this case, the dried gill of a dracomander.

As she says the words of the spell, she squeezes the sac until it bursts, soaking the gill in ink, and as the incantation finishes, the ink pulls away from the spongy gill and into the air, bubbling and flowing free of gravity. 

Mue chitters, perhaps nervous, but she’s glad for the snack, and she trusts Sigrin as she directs the color where it needs to go. 

“There,” Sigrin says, watching Mue hop over to the mirror and fluff up her feathers with a disapproving grumble. “I’m sorry, I know, it’s not fashionable, but I can’t have anyone recognizing you. You have to look like all the other birds for now. I told you you could go free, but if you’re sticking with me, I’m keeping you safe and that’s that.”

Mue flaps up onto the chair and then the little table and gives the letter a harsh peck.

“I’m getting to it! Goodness.”

She relishes the handwriting and all the little references only family would ever understand, simultaneously proof of authorship and of the letter being voluntary. After everything she’s been through with Soren -- and with him now missing from the castle, if the rumors are true -- it is a balm to her soul to find Claudia not only alive, but safe and even  _ happy,  _ wherever she is. 

She doesn’t  _ say _ where she is, but it’s possible to infer she’s not alone, and after all, someone friendly must have provided her the paper and ink, and--

_ Oh.  _

About halfway down the page, there it is.

A veiled reference to a spell no one even believed in, affirmed by a mention of the _ cosmetic  _ consequences, and the riskiest message in the entire letter, skillfully elided but, to Sigrin’s eyes, standing out as clear as if it were calligraphed in bold red ink. 

_ Viren is alive!?  _

He was when this was written, and must be now, since they’re together in whatever safe place they’ve found. 

Sigrin lost her home, her friends, and Hue. Kids (she thinks of them as kids, young as they seem to her) have been getting picked up by Moonshadow agents left and right despite her efforts to protect them. Righteous anger is simmering up to the surface of their gentle little movement. 

She needed a win so badly,  _ never _ did she expect it would be this. 

He’s  _ alive!  _

It’s amazing, how the world seems a touch brighter than it was a moment ago, even if she hasn’t seen him in years, even if they parted on less-than-ideal terms and haven’t exchanged so much as a note except through Soren and Claudia, even if he’s probably still irascible and shortsighted and lacking in boundaries about sacrificing himself at the slightest provocation. (She remembers all the reasons she was glad to go back to the mountain, but  _ still.) _

Despite it all, it’s a deeply unexpected joy to know he’s alright. 

She has to write back. 

No, she can do better. She has to find a way to get messages back and forth without depending on Mue to cross a continent every time. A bird can only be asked to do so much. There must be a better way and Sigrin’s determined to figure out what that might be. 

Still, it’s a fantastic start.

She’s making plans for how she might begin her search when there’s a knock at the door at the bottom of the stairs. 

On the other side, when she opens it, is Princess Hasima herself, signal-scarf wrapped tight around her chin, dark eyes serious as always, making her look so much older than she is.

Her accent comes out through the fabric when she speaks. 

“There is news.”

* * *

It should feel good, being here. The sun bakes the hardpan, soaking into Scyntyllah’s scales and moving through her with a perfect light and heat. Just east of the border, she can  _ feel  _ the magic pouring against the barrier and crashing back, eddying all around this place in sparks. 

It should be life-affirming, it should be the second or third best place on the continent for a Sun dragon to bask.

Of course, that’s why  _ he’s  _ here.

Closing in, she makes sure to drop as close to the ground as she can without landing, until she’s found the perfect flat rock so low it’s almost on a level with the river of lava. She spreads her wings wide and presses her body against the stone, curling her tail close. Deep in her throat, she makes a subservient humming growl, long and steady like a giant horn. 

From here, she has to wait. 

She hears him before she sees him. As much as he lacks vision, she knows from experience that his other senses tell him where she is, from the vibrations through the ground and the air to the smell of her and the magic that lights her up clear as anything.

So it isn’t a surprise when he lands feet in front of her, shining gold under the clear sky, big enough it’s impossible to get used to him, even after all this time. 

On a plane invisible to most species of the world, she stretches out magical antennae, sweeping softly until hers meet his, and they twirl together. Just because he  _ can  _ speak the Small Tongue doesn’t mean he  _ likes  _ to. Scyntyllah enjoys it, but would never say so.

_ What tidings?  _ He begins. She was waiting for this, knowing better than to speak before she’s spoken to.

_ Ah, auxiliary to the sun itself,  _ she addresses him.  _ He has agreed to decry the child of death with whom he shares a mother. _

_ For now,  _ Sol Regem worries.  _ Do not trust him. Humans will always turn against you. This experiment of Zubeia’s is bound to fail. Sooner, I suspect, than later. We cannot let her make us weak. The mirror. Has it been found? _

She hesitates to give the bad news. A dark streak of pain comes across the link. She gasps. Involuntarily, her wings beat against the ground and he tightens his grip on her, on her connection to the Sun. She is choked. 

It takes everything in her to show her submission by stilling her struggle until she is flat and unmoving. 

Finally, he lets go.

_ I’m sorry. I’m sorry, no, my agents still seek it.  _ Her message judders inconsistently across as she reestablishes the flow of power through her body.  _ There is nowhere from which they are forbidden in their new work, and they know what great fortune awaits one who turns it over to us. Please.  _

In the physical world, he reaches forward with a claw.  _ You know their true character, no matter what your traitorous, foolish sister may think. _

_ I do.  _ This is hard. If she’s honest, she has to admit that bad eggs notwithstanding, they aren’t quite the goblins she believed them to be. Though, if they  _ still  _ conceal the mirror, somehow--

Scyntyllah must hold back every drop of compassion, for the humans  _ or  _ the disgraced Pyrrah, press it into a corner of her mind where it cannot leak across to him.

_ As long as they hold that mirror, we can trust nothing. Only the Fallen Star could have cast a shadow on the City of Gold.  _

_ I still don’t know why we don’t tell Xan-- _

_ Are you questioning me!?  _ This one comes with a hot growl in the physical world. 

_ Never. Of course not. I wouldn’t,  _ Scyntyllah promises.

_ You are dismissed,  _ he says, but she knows better than to move yet.  _ I will be listening, Scyntyllah. You were chosen for a reason. I know you value order as much as I do. Show me I can trust you to keep a few worms in your grasp. _

She floods the link with affirmations as he closes it.

Only when he’s out of sight entirely does she leave. 

Despite the pale specter always watching her from the nearby Caldera,  _ and _ despite the magical desert across the barrier, she is oddly pleased to return to Katolis, and to sleep long before the event with young Ezran.

* * *

Ylai and Narampu attend to Ezran’s armor -- ceremonial and golden, crafted new for his measurements because they had nothing formal enough in his size to begin with. 

Well, as far as Ezran’s concerned, that was a problem with the armor,  _ not  _ with his size. Heavy pauldrons and gauntlets and greaves, and a breastplate that reminds him of his father in a way he doesn’t like to think about because it makes his eyes water.

Much as he knows regular armor is not like this, it’s lighter and more mobile, he still doesn’t think it suits him. He hardly recognizes himself in the mirror, and he hopes he never has to wear the genuine article. 

Though, if he’s going to be king, is it inevitable?

He wants to rule over a nation where it’s unnecessary, but with every passing day, he sees more and more clearly what that  _ really _ entails, and it’s hard to say if it’s better, yet.

Hovering in the doorway, Opeli is in her new Minister-of-Justice dress uniform, a column of navy-blues and wine-reds, so much darker in color than her cleric’s robes. She reports that Queen Aanya has arrived and is being received by staff. She’s on the back of a dragon as well, though it was worried Fosso’s size and presence would  _ send the wrong message,  _ so he has selected an emissary smaller than Scyntyllah. 

As if Ezran cares about any of that. He nods his way through the briefing. 

True to her word, Opeli has Runaan go to the Queen Regent’s chambers on his own, so Opeli and Corvus can form the other two points of the square around him for the procession, for his comfort. 

Outside, he can see Scyntyllah’s building from his window. The crowd around it is incredible, he hasn’t seen so many people since the festival when they returned from the spire. 

It feels like forever ago, even though it hasn’t even been a full year since his father hunted Zym’s.

At this point, the speech has been delayed so many times, on the walk over, Ezran’s just relieved it’ll be over soon. 

Still, he does slow outside Callum’s room, for a moment.

_ I’m sorry,  _ he thinks through the door as hard as he can.  _ We’ll be together again soon I’m sure of it.  _

The steps pass in a blink, and before he knows it, he stands at the beginning of the procession, surrounded by regiments of elves. 

Softly, Corvus’ voice reaches him. He and Opeli have briefly broken formation to help arrange the escorts. 

“--A little farther apart, remember he’s meant to look like a king, not your  _ prisoner--” _

It is a short walk, and then he is assisted onto Scyntyllah’s head. The crowd fills her enormous chamber and, through the artistic gaps in the walls meant to let in wind and light, can be seen stretching out and out, across the newly reopened bridge and onto the castle walls, and sprawling around the riverbank in all directions. If it were cold enough to properly freeze the river, they’d be standing on the ice too. 

He takes a deep breath, and begins to speak. 

* * *

The first stars are out, and Callum makes his first sketch of the night. He’s gone from one sketch at midnight every night to a sketch at sundown, a sketch at midnight, and a sketch before dawn. The midnight ones are the most important, but his grip on the progression has grown stronger than ever, especially with the last few books Narampu’s been kind enough to deliver. 

The shapes of the constellations in the books are not the ones he was taught as a child, but they correspond startlingly well with the runes he found. 

Every clear night, he’s sure he gets a little closer. There’s something that ties the sky and the stars together, and he walks it like a tightrope. The guards know by now to bring his meals at night, he won’t eat during the day. The quality of the food has dropped a little with the change in schedule, but it doesn’t matter

Ezran’s notes are getting shorter and vaguer, which makes Callum wonder if things aren’t going the way he was hoping.

At one point, as he draws, he hears Ezran’s voice in the corridor. What is he doing? He so rarely comes this way these days, perhaps not allowed.

It almost shakes him out of his focus.

Almost, but not quite. Tonight is special -- the constellations link arms in an hour or two, one of any number of unique configurations that wash the world in stellar magic. Granted, only creatures connected to the Star Primal can feel anything, but it’s still cool. The literature says this particular one happens once a decade, so he’s lucky to see it while he’s in the midst of this new hobby.

His eyes are fixed on the first glint of the sixth star against the periwinkle sky.

The books call this the oldest star, and all he can do is think about how much it must have seen, and how far it must wheel through the void above every day, every night, every instant. He thinks of speed and space, and how starlight crosses everything to reach him, to break apart into a million fragments too small to be seen so it can turn into everything that exists.

Stars are not so different from the sky, in that way -- the way they underpin the bones of reality itself, holding everything like cupped hands.

It’s not far now. He can almost touch it.

* * *

The heat from all the feet crushing the grass around the Queen Regent’s outbuilding has melted the powdery snow deposited by transient clouds earlier in the day. With the cold of nightfall, though, crystals linger on the rooftop and scattered around the tree branches. Thousands of people breathe white puffs into the clear night air and almost everyone crowding around the structure is wrapped in layer after layer -- hats, cloaks, hoods, scarves, mittens -- it makes it trivial for Rayla to go unnoticed. 

It also makes her wonder how mystery-mage and company will  _ find  _ her. What if they don’t? What if someone else finds her first? How can she be sure whoever talks to her is the right person, and not Runaan’s agent in disguise?

The worries drive her to conduct a search of her own, shuffling through tight-packed humanity, even though she has no idea what she’s looking for. Is this insane? It might be insane. Close to her chest, she clutches a plain brown sack with a treasure inside. Should this not work out, it might at least prove useful another way. 

If the agents consisted of only Moonshadow elves, it would have been impossible to get, but most of the Sunfire agents don’t know her on sight, and don’t have the same respect for Lujanne’s illusion-wristbands as her kind do. They leave them on restaurant tables while they go to the privy, or let them dangle from a bag as they walk. 

Rayla has three.

She hopes that will be enough to prove her honesty.

A startled yelp rolls through the crowd as the Queen Regent swoops low overhead, and Rayla takes a position off to the side, behind a cluster of tall men in heavy mining gloves. Under other circumstances she’d be thrilled to see Ezran, but now she’s not sure it’s a good idea for them to recognize one another. Granted, there’s so many people, the odds seem low to begin with, but there’s no room for risk tonight. 

Scyntyllah lands beside a platform, and Ezran steps solemnly onto her head, one tiny little hand wrapped around a horn like it was a walking stick. 

As planned, the dragon takes her place at the front of her own chambers, and Ezran begins to speak. 

The topic of the address has been a matter of rumor around the lower city for more than a week. Rayla can guess these aren’t Ezran’s words. Sometimes a person has to make compromises, especially in a position as precarious as his seems to be (perhaps moreso than he even knows.) Just because she doesn’t fault him, though, doesn’t mean she wants to listen to it. She was hoping whoever was going to find her would have done it by now.

When she begins to despair in earnest, a gloved hand grasps her elbow.

* * *

When Callum connected to the sky, it was a firework of a feeling -- soaring and bursting as all the links came together in his mind. The first spell was a glorious moment of truth, the breath of mom’s love in his lungs, a proof of concept that meant he was who he believed he could be, that there was freedom and choice, and more to his future than fear and loss and darkness.

Although he has come to realize Stars and Sky are not so different, and as much as Sky is helping him form a bridge to Stars, and it’s a matter of reaching a little  _ farther,  _ at the right  _ moment…  _

_ This  _ is nothing like  _ that  _ was.

It happens with no fanfare whatsoever.

He’s just trying something out -- he notices a constellation like a rune he saw once, muttering the name of it as he traces, only a practice, really -- and he doesn’t even realize what he’s done until he’s done it. 

That is, until he’s on the wrong side of the window, floating comfortably in midair and looking back at his body, frozen in place, slumped against the stone.

_ Whoa. _

A connection to Stars is like tugging on dad’s coattails while he’s busy with matters of state, making some trivial, childish request, like “ _ can I play outside,”  _ and then waiting patiently for him to reach a convenient pause and toss off a thoughtless  _ “I don’t see why not,”  _ before going back to his grown-up business. 

It is cold, in every imaginable way.

It occurs to him then to look down at himself, out here. The shape is right. His hands, his arms, his legs, his clothes, all there as they should be -- but the color is all wrong, at least as insofar as he has color at all. He can see right through his palms, and everything about him is cast in a kind of faded lilac, glowing hazy at the edges.

Below, people have congregated around Scyntyllah’s chamber. All the torches look like fireflies from this far away -- and he’s  _ warm,  _ despite the freezing weather, still feeling the temperature inside the room. 

Excitement bubbles inside him. Flying was good, astral projection is… well not as  _ thrilling  _ or anywhere near as fun, but infinitely more useful to his current situation, despite all the questions he has. 

Like: Can anyone see him? Or hear him? Can he touch things? How far from his body can he go? What senses come with him and which ones stick with his body? Is there a way to change that? How long can he keep this up? Is it safe? Can he do this on any clear night, or only special ones? Where’s the  _ nexus  _ for this?

And what  _ is _ all the hubbub down there?

_ Ez? _

* * *

“Rayla, right?” Asks a lowish voice to her left, a tall, hooded woman. “I’m the one you’re looking for.”

“Can I have a name this time?” Rayla asks without looking directly at her.

“My young friends tell me you’ve been sneaking around, spying on them… you might have heard me called  _ Hylja.” _

“ _ You’re _ her?” The name is familiar, but all she knows about the person behind it is that they’re apparently well-known in the lower city, at the center of a youthful, cautious, and quickly growing dark magic community. Rayla assumed she’d be meeting an errand-runner, a  _ messenger, _ not… not this. Not for the first time, she wishes she had her blades, just in case.

“The same.”

“But that’s not your _ real _ name?” Rayla ventures. She’d almost swear she saw a flicker in her peripheral vision up by the castle wall, but when she looks, there’s nothing there. 

“No. My real name is Sigrin.”

“Why’re you tellin’ me?” Rayla clutches the bag a little tighter. “I’m not stupid enough to think you trust me already.”

“Because you’re about to find out who we are to each other anyway.”

“Excuse me?”

Sigrin turns Rayla in her grip so they face one another and she gets her first look at the woman’s face, shadowed though it is by the hood: she is pale, forehead and mouth lined by years, blue eyes framed by exhausted shadows.

“I do dark magic,” she says.

“I know.”

“Think of the adorable Xadian creature you most love, and then imagine me crushing it with my bare hands as I consume its power and turn it against someone who looks like you.”

Rayla wishes she  _ wasn’t  _ following instructions.  _ “Why?  _ If this is your idea of a sales pitch-- _ ” _

“Just the opposite. I want to upset you, disturb you, make you turn away, so you do that  _ before  _ you know where I live and what my friends’ names are, and where we meet and what we need… rather than after. If it makes you sick, why do you want to get close to it?”

“I went through this already with your  _ friend--” _

“My  _ friends  _ think you’re going to turn on us and destroy everything we’ve built -- little as it is -- the second your boyfriend does.”

“He won’t!” 

“Oh? Like his brother?” Sigrin looks at Ezran and back. “He’s  _ not _ his father, and we’re not an army,  _ Rayla,  _ you have to know that. We’re  _ refugees _ . Most of them are young, often alone, desperate, and frightened of  _ you and yours.  _ This is my real face, and name, because if you’re going to hurt anyone, I want it to be me, and I want you to  _ know  _ it’s me so you don’t go after anyone else. One way or another, your little stalking project is done tonight. If you’re on a secret mission to get in close so you can cut off the head of the snake,  _ look no further.” _

Perhaps it isn’t dark magic, but it feels like it, the way the woman’s intensity sneaks into her lungs and freezes her breath.

All this time, she’s been on the fence, trying to get comfortable enough with dark magic to get involved, hoping she could dip a toe in the water of this movement, maybe stop Runaan from scooping up anyone more innocent people like he did Callum. 

She  _ almost  _ doesn’t realize the woman’s hand is shaking, and not from the cold. 

There is no  _ toe in the water. _ There’s in, or out, and this  _ Sigrin  _ is here, despite obvious fear and discomfort and risk, to make sure that’s understood without putting anyone else on the line. 

Rayla would be lying if she claimed she couldn’t respect that. 

“You said I would know who we are to each other,” Rayla says, a question without being a question. “I’m guessing that’s next.”

Sigrin’s mouth twitches -- would it have been a smile? A grimace? She tightens her hands into fists so they stop trembling. 

“You killed my husband.”

No.

_ No!  _ No way, not a chance, it’s bad enough she had to try and come around to that monster’s  _ son,  _ but someone who  _ chose  _ to be close to him? Who  _ married  _ him? Absolutely not. For a moment, Rayla considers what the  _ odds  _ are, but then, she supposes, birds of a feather--

This is insane. 

She just about turns around and storms off. She could! She could leave right now, disappear into the crowd, maybe find herself a new place to stay--

On the other hand, if someone killed Callum, for example, how willing would  _ Rayla  _ be to meet that person herself, challenge their intentions, and accept help from them?

How much would she have to care to be willing to do that?

“Are you desperate, or stupid, or did you hate him?” Rayla asks through her teeth.

“It's complicated,” Sigrin says without blinking.

“You want me to say I’m sorry? Because--”

“I don’t care. It’s full disclosure, like everything else. You help us with your eyes open or not at all. I’m here to find out if you want what I want bad enough. That’s all that matters.”

“I want real peace. I want…  _ balance. _ ”

“Even if that means people do dark magic?”

Deep breath. “Maybe. _Maybe._ I mean, I have some _thoughts_ on that point, about, you know, _lines_ I feel should be drawn? But I’m willing to say it’s not… _all_ all bad. And it did save my family. Maybe balance involves _some_ darkness sometimes? I don’t--” She’s not being especially articulate, but Sigrin’s got a slow smile that reminds her of her own mother. “And anyway I guess, without dark magic, you... I don’t know. I’m _not_ doin’ any, if that’s--”

Sigrin laughs out a soft white cloud. “Don’t worry about that. You brought something, like Ha--like she asked?”

“I did.” 

Ezran’s speech ended several minutes ago, the crowd’s not dispersed because they were promised sacks of rice and salt, and now they’re shifting about trying to figure out where the distribution is starting. 

This is so different from anything Rayla expected. She’s not certain she’s ready. It all seems so much  _ bigger  _ than she is… but then, so did everything before. 

She hands over the little cloth bag, and Sigrin peeks inside it.

“These are--” she looks around and whispers: “agent’s bands.”

Rayla nods. “Thought that might fit the bill.” 

“So you  _ are  _ serious about wanting to help us.”

“I am.”

“Then I have one important question for you, because I think  _ you _ might be the only person I can ask who could have any idea where I should start.” Sigrin’s face is tightly sincere.

“Go on.”

“After he fell,  _ what happened to the staff?” _

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That concludes Book 5: Star
> 
> And now, with all the ingredients in the pot, we shall let them simmer for awhile. That is to say, expect a time-skip before the commencement of season 6.
> 
> I think there'll be a bit of real world time also, but it'll happen! Also, look out for some short one-shots related to the time gap, because I have a few thoughts I kind of want to express about it and may decide to do a little of that?
> 
> For anyone who hasn't seen it yet, I just want to leave a few links here to the art so far!
> 
> [Viren and Sigrin in happier times, by Joleanart on Twitter](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EYiabOGUEAAwscC?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
> 
> [Raum, by Daedradagon on Tumblr](https://64.media.tumblr.com/5d07008bcaa63539cb255f6ed4439067/a71f2e6c8bc4d0f2-77/s1280x1920/d11b435689727bc219761ce8948a367f2b66e4b3.png)
> 
> [Brodigies reunion, by Cinnonym!](https://bringmefleshandbringmewine.tumblr.com/post/629096671580766208/so-i-spotted-cinnos-beautiful-work-when-it-got)
> 
> Those were commissions, but we also got some gorgeous entirely voluntary art by outcastsnmagic on Twitter, featuring [Kannati](https://twitter.com/outcastsnmagic/status/1243357806306058240?s=20) and [The library in Kannati](https://twitter.com/outcastsnmagic/status/1247266609733009408?s=20)


	20. Interlude: In the Eye of a Hurricane (there is quiet, for just a moment)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”_   
>  **― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's... a not-a-chapter-chapter! 
> 
> If the show can have stories between seasons, so can I, dangit. 
> 
> Enjoy: A quiet year on Manawa between the end of Season 5 and the beginning of Season 6.

**Interlude:**

**In the Eye of a Hurricane (there is quiet, for just a moment)**

* * *

**Winter**

* * *

When the year begins, the sea-wind is an angry child, screaming at the trees, spitting on the rocks, and throwing foam off the caps of waves. It doesn’t snow much, far milder than the winters of Viren’s past, but it does rain sideways for most of the week after Winter’s Turn. 

Viren ventures up the hill despite, or perhaps _because_ of, exactly this.

Of all things, it’s _Sarai_ on his mind. It shouldn’t be so unexpected, that one loss would call to mind another, but what strikes him is the way one never seems to prepare him for the next. 

Losing Sarai was like stepping out of one reality and into another -- a bleaker, darker, colder world, and no road back home. He was consumed by Harrow’s grief, bound completely to its service, and to picking up the slack in the running of things. His efforts were hidden then, Opeli and others unable to hinder him because he was eclipsed by Harrow, no matter how much weight he carried for him. 

And somewhere on the periphery, poor Amaya was left largely to her own devices, Viren’s neglect only further splintering whatever would otherwise have been left of _their_ connection.

Even Sigrin was bereft, despite the brevity of _their_ friendship.

They, all of them, were logs in a raft on an ocean of time, and Sarai the rope that bound them. Without her, the pieces drifted to the winds. 

Claudia, now, is an echo of Viren’s younger self: the questions she hesitates to ask, the weight of the worry she carries, the way she suddenly moves around him as though he is made of spun glass and might break if jostled.

She is sublimating her own emotions to manage his, the way he did with Harrow. As clearly as he can see it, and as badly as he wants to open his mouth to stop it, words fail him completely.

He should be used to failure by now, but like loss, each one hurts differently from the last, and he is no better for the practice.

When he lost Harrow, it was crisis after insult after injury, only the long walk south allowed him the chance to _begin_ to process it.

And just when he thought he was beginning to learn how to live in the unspooling world Harrow left behind--

The paper-house, open at the sides in more pleasant seasons, is now enclosed tightly in soft layers of braided root-and-reed mats wrapped gracefully from roof to ground to redirect the weather. The temporary walls turn the building from squarish to conical, gray clouds puffing out the top from the fireplace inside, a friendly little volcano.

Passing from outside to inside -- warm, dry, and cast in soft firelight -- is such a shocking change it leaves him briefly dizzy. As soon as he’s through the door-flap, whatever conversation the ladies were having is over. 

Two of them are younger, and only pay his entrance half-attention at most, but the other three, his elders, beckon him to the bench by the fire where they work, beaming with welcoming expectation. 

Until _the news,_ he spent a lot of time in the paper-house, certainly more than seems customary for the men of Manawa. Sometimes he is with Claudia, sometimes by himself, but most often with these women who spend more time here than their own homes. Day by day, in a process quick but subtle enough he didn’t see it until he looked back, they’ve taken him into the fold as some kind of wayward nephew afflicted with amnesia, tragically unable to remember that he belonged to them all along. 

It’s not a kind of relationship he’s ever had, not once in his life, and he doesn’t have _any_ idea how to navigate it, but strangely, they don’t seem to mind that at all.

There’s Klotah, stripping the green and black layers away from the soft white pulp of the musteberry bark. She tosses clumps of fiber into a cauldron of cloudy, simmering water with regular splashes, and the dreck mostly goes into the fire. 

At the other end of the curved bench, Leiki is bent in half over the rinsing tub, soft belly pressed against her lap as she pulls soft white strands apart by hand until they are separated, as fine as her candyfloss hair. 

Next to her, Atra (with strength Viren would never have expected from a petite eighty-year-old if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes) wields a rounded wooden hammer and pounds the strands into mush that will eventually join the vat currently being tested, adjusted, and agitated by the younger women.

“Here, here, warm up before you get started pulling sheets, water’s cold today--” Klotah’s sleeves are rolled up but her hood is drawn, despite the warmth from the fire. Up close, she asks, “How’d it go?”

“Klotah!” Leiki scolds. “Give him a moment to _breathe_ \--”

“I don’t… how did what--” Viren glances between them, and then he realizes how clear the sight line is down the hill to his home. He’s talked to them about Soren enough, probably more to them than to anyone. It would be notable, if they saw Soren approach. The intrusion should bother him, but he can’t muster any indignation. “Oh. I--it didn’t.”

“Didn’t?” Asks Atra, brows creeping up over large spectacles. There’s no judgment, or disappointment, just genuine, kind interest. 

“He had… news. That was all.” He doesn’t want to sound impatient or irritable, but his voice clips, and there’s not much he can do about that. On the bright side, as hard as it is to admit, it _is_ a little nice that they care. “He was fulfilling an obligation, nothing more. I thought he might come back, that—nevermind. It doesn’t matter what I thought. The point is that I didn’t have a chance to…”

“To say the things you wanted to.” Leiki sees his struggle and picks up the end of the sentence for him. 

“That’s hard.” Klotah’s freckled and magic-marked hand reassures his shoulder before returning to the task.

“Yes. Well. It seems… Claudia and Soren’s moth--I mean, that is--” Viren looks into the fire. This will be the first time he’s said this way, out loud. His voice is so quiet it seems alien to himself. “ _Sigrin_ was killed, by a dragon..”

Atra’s strike of the fiber comes on the word _killed_ and sticks there, still on the post. Even the young girls at the vat stop churning. 

“I apologize,” Viren says, realizing he’s overburdened them. “I shouldn’t have--”

“Nonsense,” Atra interrupts him. “We’re only thinking of her for you. For her return to the--”

“Please, don’t,” Viren stops her. More cruelly than he intends, he adds: “I am _trying_ to assimilate, but superstition will not help me, not now. And anyway, it isn’t as if I have any right to mourn.”

The three women look at one another, inscrutable. They aren’t biologically sisters, a single glance could confirm that, but they read one another like triplets. At this point, they must have known one another most of their lives.

Klotah, nearest to him, sets down her bark. She leans over and gives Viren a hard smack upside the back of his head.

Too stunned to respond, he looks at her in mute indignation as she peacefully picks up her work again. 

“Of course you’re allowed to mourn,” she says at last. “Don’t be stupid.”

He tries to clarify. “If it weren’t for _my_ actions, she might be alive.”

“It won’t help to be arrogant, either,” she adds placidly, with the air of someone picking up an animal moving toward danger and gently redirecting it elsewhere.

“What am I to say, then, that isn’t stupid or arrogant, according to you?” His body is tight with frustration. He wouldn’t have thought that an arrogant thing to say before, but he can’t help seeing it now that it’s been said.

“Why don’t you tell us about her?” Atra suggests in a thoughtful pause between her resumed hammer-strikes.

“Yes, of course!” Leiki grins. “You must have stories.”

He is hesitant, at first. Trying to blend in has been an exercise in remembering that he has two ears and one mouth for a reason, and there’s a part of him that fears he will begin to speak and not know when to stop, that he will put his foot in his mouth, not exactly a rare mistake for him.

No one’s given him the slightest impression that his position is precarious, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t imagine it, as he always has, no matter the reality. 

Klotah passes him a strip of bark, putting his hands to work, and he can feel the invitation to speak. 

Outside, the storm worsens, and he is glad he chose the moment he did to set out. Even _his_ self-flagellation has its limits.

Viren told them a little about her already, when Claudia set about writing her apparently-ill-fated letter -- only the basics, though. For this moment, he chooses smaller stories, moments that stand out perhaps only to him. 

He tells them about an expedition to Xadia when Soren was still a baby, safe at home with his nurses while Viren and Sigrin snuck across the south end of the border and into the woods, where a protective spell around a Branchfolk village got them as lost as Viren has ever been, before or since. 

They fought cruelly over their differing opinions on how to best escape without getting perforated with arrows, and he wondered if they’d ever even speak to one another again if they survived. 

“But you did,” Klotah says. 

“I think we both decided to simply let it go, which is strange. We never let anything go -- two world champion grudge-holders. We had a fight over the color of a bedsheet at an inn. The lighting was bad, I thought it was black, she thought it was dark blue, we were still bringing it up _years_ later” He laughs. “Still, I think we were even closer after that, despite it all. She was better prepared than I was, better supplied, which revealed this bizarre combination of anger and care. She’d say things like, _If our son is an orphan it’ll be your fault. Anyway, have you eaten?_ ”

He tells them about some of the more intransigent noblewomen, relics of Harrow’s father’s time. Despite the fact that not one of them showed an ounce of interest in Viren, they still seemed affronted at Sigrin’s arrival in Katolis as his wife, as though she’d absconded with something that didn’t belong to her. 

“Even worse,” he confides, “she bored them by refusing to grouse about me. Even when we fought, she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. You can’t imagine the shock and the rumors when she left.”

Leiki frowns. “Didn’t you tell us before that your king married a soldier? How did they react to _that?_ ”

“Sarai? She charmed everyone. It was just the way she was. She _changed_ everything. The cultural shift that was already growing… _she_ lit a _fire_ under it. Harrow used to joke that _I_ could talk the legs off a horse, but _Sarai_ could convince it to go for a walk after.

“Sigrin was never quite so…” Viren struggles to articulate. “Sigrin enjoyed her own company. Even some of the people she cared for most, she kept at arm’s length. To get closer than that, you had to be better than her solitude -- and that was a high bar.”

One of the young women at the vat chuckles under her breath, in sympathy if Viren’s not much mistaken, and Atra smiles loosely to herself in a way that suggests she, too, finds it a familiar concept. 

She would have liked it out here. That’s what gets him. Before Soren told him, he’d begun to allow himself to think of her, because how could he not? It should have been her, he was already thinking that even when he hoped she was alive, when he realized he was surrounded by all the things she liked best.

It should have been Sigrin who got to see the nexus, to read ancient tomes, to befriend strange creatures, to learn about precisely the ancient traditions she always wanted to probe. She could have had answers to the questions that dogged her. Manawa should have been _hers_ to explore.

Viren fears it’s wasted on him. Worse, now he can sense a kind of burgeoning obligation to make sure it’s _not._

He’s telling them about one of her many failed attempts to infuse magic into the soil of the west when he realizes he knows now _why_ it never worked, and he thinks how ridiculous it is that he can’t _tell_ her, and he finally cries, almost out of the blue. 

For once in his life, no one stops him, not even himself. His parents aren’t there to be awkwardly embarrassed at the display, his classmates aren’t there to bully him into stoicism, his children aren’t there to unintentionally pressure him into setting a strong example.

No one draws attention to his tears, but nor do they ignore him. Atra passes him a handkerchief, Leiki a flask. Wordlessly, he is given space, not only for Sigrin, but for Harrow, and Sarai, and the entire yawning gulf between the life he once planned and the life he is living. 

It must be a particularly strong wash of emotion, powerful enough to make it through the link to Aaravos, because wherever he is, a faint pulse of concern rolls back to him through it. He doesn’t know what to do about that, so he simply lets it be.

Eventually, he does what he came to: he pulls paper, sheets and sheets of it. It’s hard to keep up with what he takes for writing, but he’s determined to carry his own weight, at least. At some point as the afternoon wears on, Claudia stops by and it only takes the slightest prompting to get her to tell a few stories of her own as she works. 

They head back down the hill together after dark, the path illuminated by the lights from their hands. She catches him glance at the smoke puffing steadily from the little house shared by Soren and his… what? Traveling companion? Claudia claims Viren met him on several occasions, but he doesn’t remember. The young man’s purpose here is unclear, and no one will tell him a thing about it. He tries and fails not to be irritated by this splinter in his mind.

Claudia splits off to her own home. The link to Aaravos is dark and still. 

Viren rubs a salve into his bad knee and goes to sleep, wondering whatever became of the candle in his office, if there was anyone there to see it go out.

* * *

**Spring**

* * *

To hear Raum’s father tell it, King Meihanyr was a man who loved nothing more than a good boundary. A place for everyone, and everyone in their place. 

Far from offense or resentment, all the adults Raum knew as a child spoke of the old king fondly, appreciative of the predictability and order he brought to their lives. One always knew _precisely_ where they stood with him, how to speak to him, what he wanted and how to deliver it without a crumb of ambiguity. The rules were clear, and in return, one was expected to follow them to the letter. 

The practical upshot of this is that everyone in contact with him, right down to the _royal dairy farmers_ got crown-sponsored visits from teachers of etiquette, so as not to make any faux pas during deliveries or royal inspections. Raum may have been raised in a barn in one sense, but he was _not_ in another, and he was trained well. 

Now, he has a startlingly difficult time addressing Soren’s father. Fortunately, they interact so little it hardly matters, at least until leaves on red stalks begin to push up through the ground outside Raum’s new home.

“I didn’t think--” Viren says in passing, half-under-his breath, before apparently committing himself to a conversation. “Forgive me, Raum, is it? Claudia tells me we’ve met, but she’s rather _evasive_ about the details, and--”

Raum gets to his feet. “Not at all, sir. It would have been a long time ago, and only briefly. I made some deliveries to Katolis Castle.”

“What is that?” Viren indicates. “Beets?” 

“Beets, yes, sir.” Raum says. The assumption is unspoken, but Raum hears it nevertheless, and addresses it. “Just regular ones. The sand mix doesn’t go very deep, there’s good soil underneath. With the stones in the seawall down there, it’s basically a raised garden bed.”

Raum explains that Quanah was the one who gave him the seeds, but doesn’t bother to mention the deal he made. A week later, though, when Raum goes to meet Quanah to uphold his end of the bargain, he discovers it must have been at least roughly the same. After all, here is Viren.

It’s an overnight trip, with four of them in total, up the mountain to collect shadowpawtail stalks. Aside from Raum and Viren, there is Quanah and his uncle (who kindly shortens his very long name to Oís) forming the second group of the season.

Quanah’s comfort in recruiting two men over forty and one amputee seems to suggest that it must be more sedate of an endeavor than he thought, but he is quickly proven completely and utterly wrong. If the pace of the hike wasn’t enough, wading hip-deep through a spring-fed pond near the top certainly is.

Egrets and avocets startle at their approach, but return quickly when they realize that the splashing and fumbling in the water has startled prey from its hiding places. Greed triumphs over fear, in the end.

The shadowpaw roots are shallow, freed from the muck with relative ease if one bends deeper in the pond to pull from the base of the stalk. Quanah is thoughtful enough to give Raum a questioning glance, a clear double-check if he’s alright, and when Raum gives him a nod back, that’s the end of it -- he is simply trusted to know his own limits. 

It’s only a half truth, because Raum’s never tried this before, but he doesn’t want to disappoint. He’s in cold, mud-swirled water up to the chest when he gets low enough to balance and pull at the same time. It takes a little trial and error, and he stumbles twice badly enough that his head nearly goes below the water and his heart stops at the thought that his hair might get wet. 

So much, balanced on something so stupid. It isn’t only this, now, but a constant problem, leaving him afraid of being caught in the rain, anxious every moment that he spends in the public baths. 

The second fall has him rattled enough he wants to go home -- not to Katolis, but his _new_ home. Little does Soren’s father know, beets aren’t all he’s working on. Sense of community be damned: In less than a year, if all goes as planned, a row of thujas will line that little crescent of land, little by little concealing the home and the garden from all but the birds above.

He’ll have a place where he knows he is invisible to everyone outside the one person who is _proven_ safe in this world-of- _after._ _So_ tantalizing is it that for a moment, he forgets that the west exists, and the spectre of Doctrina Limen fades completely from his thoughts.

When he gets the hang of the process he racks up stalks quickly, though he is cold and already more tired than he expected. Not wanting to bring the mood down, he hums. As his sister used to say, _you can’t bitch and hum at the same time, and I can tell you which one I’d rather listen to._

He can’t help wondering if Viren’s the same, keeping to himself to avoid grousing, or if he’s just lost in his own thoughts. 

Dark stalks pile up on the bank, rhizomes drying in the sun, fluffy turquoise seed-balls wavering in the breeze at the other end. How Quanah decides when it’s enough is beyond him, but it’s a relief when it happens. Oís must know it’s almost time, though, because just before Quanah calls it, he stops and wanders deeper into the spring. Raum doesn’t know what he’s doing out there until they all heave themselves up out of the water and Oís comes with a woven basket full of wiggling fish and lotus roots. 

Stalks and fish and roots and all, they shift to a well-used campsite in a nearby clearing. Raum only realizes the state of his hand once he starts to dry off and warm up. The water and the cold must have hidden the damage while he was working.

Viren snaps a fire to life in the pile of logs left covered by whoever was last here.

“That’s useful,” Raum comments, the first time they’ve spoken to one another all day. “You don’t need an incantation for that? Or components?”

Viren’s voice is rough with disuse and he seems almost startled to be addressed. “Leftovers. There are always… dregs. Enough for something minor, if it can be coaxed out.”

“Efficient,” Quanah notes with a half-smile that could power a sun-spell by itself. “I like it. Can you teach me?”

“Easier with an amplifier,” Viren laments, “I can certainly try, though.”

They dry by the fire like lizards while Oís cooks. Raum can’t hide the wince when he takes the bowl in his hand. The husks on the stalks are sharp -- all four of them probably have a few cuts, but Raum’s got them all concentrated in one place, and no way to avoid use until it heals. 

Viren digs in a small satchel and hands over a container of greasy salve.

“Good for the pain,” he says. He glances around as if sizing up whether he can find something or other out here. Apparently, he concludes that he can’t. “Tomorrow, I can heal it properly, if you like.”

“Don’t you need this stuff?” Raum asks quietly, eyes flicking to the knee Viren favored on the trip here. 

“Not at the moment.”

“No surprise there. Pond’s good for the joints,” Oís says through a mouthful of lotus root. 

Raum holds the tiny bottle against his palm with his pinky, uncaps it with finger and thumb, picks up salve with his middle finger. He twists it closed again before flipping it away from his skin to make room for his middle and ring fingers to smear the ointment on his scraped-up palm. 

He catches Viren trying very hard not to watch him, and failing. It isn’t pity on his face, though. If anything, the expression is one of calculation. It’s a series of delicate movements that might imply a long time adapting, but the man is surely unwilling to imagine he’d _forget_ a one-armed farmboy.

Raum can practically hear him thinking, _when?_

He gives Viren a nod of thanks before tossing the bottle back to him. It’s a relief to eat the rest of his dinner without feeling like his palm will tear open any moment.

Quanah and his uncle lean some fat fans of pine needles over low branches to make an improvised tent and drift off easily beneath them. 

“They’re so at ease out here,” Viren says, looking up into the black shadows of the trees and at the scattered stars beyond. 

“Practice,” Raum says, experimenting with dropping the _sir._ “I’m sure that pond is like… going down to the market, for them.”

“Which I suppose makes this clearing an inn,” Viren plays along. With a wry chuckle, he adds, “The food’s certainly better than _some_ places I’ve stayed. I’ll give it that. I haven’t had lotus root in ages. Harrow was allergic, couldn’t even bring them into the castle.”

It would be an awkward silence, if it was silent at all, but it isn’t. Raum does what he always does when he’s out in the woods. He tries to pick out bird calls. Most of them aren’t ones he knows the names for. One might be a corncrake.

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” Viren prefaces, “but you have to know I’m wondering what brought you here. Soren was searching for Claudia, but I’m not sure I understand--”

“Same reason as you,” Raum says tightly.

“What, you’re… you’re _wanted?”_ It’s obvious that he’s sizing up Raum a little differently now. 

“I was dealing in dark magic components,” he says by way of some bizarre reassurance that he’s not a threat. “They... don’t let you do that anymore.”

Viren doesn’t say anything, but his jaw goes tense and his sigh is like something from a stage play, noisy and dramatic. 

“Soren told me it’s risky to talk to you,” Raum addresses. “ He said you make people do things so they think it’s their idea. I’m not sure if you had something like that in mind, when you--”

“I won’t pretend it didn’t occur to me,” Viren admits. “But, no.”

“What stopped you?”

Viren grimaces. “I wish I were _half_ as adept as he imagines. I can only imagine how different things might be. Still, I would like to believe I am at least perceptive enough to _occasionally_ not get in my own way, and at least _decent_ enough to provide perfectly normal aid without regard for the optics.”

“You did, though. Regard the optics.” 

“Yes, I did.” 

Raum’s exhaustion finally catches up with him. In the morning, the trip home is quiet, everyone focused on carrying their loads of stalks.

It isn’t beets that Viren plants outside his home after they return, but flowers — and not a few flowers, but a _riot_ of them, flowers in all different colors and sizes, flowers with a wide variety of needs, if his time spent working in the dirt is any indication. 

At first, Raum assumes they’re magical in some way, but when he asks Claudia, she shrugs and tells him she doesn’t think so.

Years back, when he reached a stage in his surgery recovery that allowed him outside, Raum spent a lot of time in the dirt. He had plenty of convenient excuses, but the truth was, it just helped. He worked on the land, and the land worked on him, and as far as he knows, that’s often the way of it. Maybe Viren is likewise not immune to the charms of humus. 

His first instinct is to share these thoughts, but the risk of feeding Soren’s fears in even the mildest defense of the man looms darkly over the idea. Probably better to let him take the lead, and just file all this away for the moment when it is more likely to be perceived as support, the way he’d intend it.

The situation becomes even more perplexing the day Viren sets out a large wooden box on a pole, with a long, thin gap at the bottom.

“I don’t know why you care,” Soren says once, despite having wondered out loud about it a few times himself. 

“I’m just curious,” Raum repeats, peering past obstacles from his own garden to get a glimpse of the other. “I didn’t exactly take him for a gardener, and now, all of the sudden...”

“That’s the thing about my dad,” Soren says. “He’s a _whatever-he-has-to-be._ You can’t rule stuff out with him.”

Amidst the soft purple twilight of the evening before the solstice, a gentle droning sound (one Soren compares to the noise that led him here) and a sweet smell on the breeze lead to the solution of the mystery at last.

The box and the garden are alive with honeybees.

* * *

**Summer**

* * *

Dawn brings mist, rolling off the waves and up the southern beach into the woods. Claudia doesn’t have to touch the water to guess it’s still chilly yet. 

She plants her feet, digs bare toes into the silvery sand, and tries to clear her mind.

“That’s not shoulder-width,” Soren points out, sitting against a dune and not at all an example of posture. “And your right knee is locked.”

“Why does that matter!?” She whirls at the waist and snaps at him. She _does_ relax her knee, but under her breath, she mutters, _“not like I’m in a parade.”_

“I don’t know, are you _trying_ to fall down again? Honestly, I’m starting to think you should just do this sitting down. At least then I wont have to catch you.”

“That is your _one job._ Literally the only reason I asked you to come out here is _because_ I passed out last time. You’re like--”

“A babysitter?”

“I will pay you _money_ to shut up.” 

“Oh yeah? Gonna go for a swim and ask some fish for a loan?”

“You know, I don’t _have_ to do magic with this thing, I _could_ just hit you with it,” Claudia points out, brandishing what she has begun to affectionately call _the pomegranate staff._

Getting here has been a process, taking longer than she ever anticipated, particularly given the way she’s procrastinated. No matter how excited she is, her fear of messing it up always gets one step ahead of her, and the longer she works on the project, the bigger and more intimidating the next step always becomes.

The final product (or what she hopes is the final product, anyway -- she thought she was done the _last_ time, _before_ the latest adjustment) is beautiful. She’d say she’s outdone herself, but she hasn’t remotely done it alone. At one point or another, almost everyone she’s come to know here has pitched in _something,_ from knowledge to components to tools to pure elbow-grease. 

At the start, she was indecisive about the best size for the thing. On the one hand, something small was appealing, something she could conceal and that wouldn’t be a problem to carry long distances. On the other, she liked the idea of something that could serve as a tool and a weapon in its own right. 

The final decider was magical stability. The stone, then, sits at eye-level, encircled in a curving, twisting wooden cage carved out from a bulge in the original stick, and reinforced with braids of slim metal threads.

Magic, of course, _also_ holds it quite securely in place, but there’s nothing wrong with a good redundancy.

The rest is gray, spiral-whittled driftwood, cut to this length for balance and filled with tiny veins drilled to ancient specifications. (This, of course, was the most frightening part of the process, where the most could go wrong, and that she put off for the longest. Eventually, she had to take the leap.)

Her right hand has the staff to hold. In her left is a little vial of thick, clearish liquid that she knows smells absolutely _hideous,_ sickly-sweet and musty, with an acridness beneath, like the worst perfume ever invented. 

“Clauds--” Soren says after a beat of silence, his tone changed. “You’re not alone this time. Long as I’m here, you’re not gonna hit the ground.”

“I know.”

“But if you _do_ fall,” he adds, jocular again, “I’m still gonna make fun of you. Like, _relentlessly._ I’m already coming up with fainting-based nicknames. So--”

She laughs as she closes her eyes to help focus. “Okay seriously, shut up now.”

“Shutting up,” he says, and she’s pretty sure he holds his breath after that.

Claudia exhales as far as she can, brings the little bottle up to her nose and winces before she even takes the breath. Not wanting to do this a third time, she is determined to do it right. She pulls as hard as she can, filling her lungs through her nostrils, forcing calm on the spasm of nausea that comes with the smell. 

She can feel it, not just in her chest but in her head, like a sinus headache but deeper, as the magic invades her mind at one end, anchoring itself.

On the exhale, she opens her eyes, holds her attention on the stone and says the incantation. Magic supports her voice from beneath as the other end of the strand snakes from her mouth on the air of her words, wrapping around the target. 

_“Reach back to me and share your secret story.”_

A shiver rattles through her. The stone still buzzes, but the staff is ready for it this time. She holds taut against it, not letting the frequency grow. The insubstantial tendril extends from her throat, twisting around the crystal completely before releasing and drawing back into her mouth. It balls into a mass somewhere just behind her eyes before it finally dissipates, leaving only the knowledge it gathered. 

There’s a feeling to it, when the light drops and her eyes go dark. She coughs out the rest of that awful smell and draws a few lungfuls of salt air to clear it. 

“You good?” Soren’s voice reaches her, a bit far away at first, and then steady, normal. 

“All good.” She swallows. “Didn’t fall down.”

“Yeah, ‘cause you didn’t lock your knees,” he asserts. “That was _super_ creepy, did it work?”

“I think--yeah--” Claudia nods, a little at first, and then bigger and faster as her eyes go back to normal and she turns the amorphous understanding into beginnings of something that she can express in words. “It worked. It worked! It really worked!”

She lets out a victory hoot and skips in a circle with the staff as her maypole.

“So uh--” Soren tries to interject. “What _does_ it do?”

“It… changes things?” She struggles to explain, the knowledge still not completely settled, gesturing wildly with her left hand as she tries to explain it. “I mean, not exactly…”

“Clauds…”

“Okay. Okay. Remember what I told you? About how I healed you?”

“Still not _super_ clear on the details,” Soren hesitates. _“Kinda_ hoped it wouldn’t come up.”

“If I’d had this, I could have…” She stops, and starts again. “Deer aren’t magic. Or at least, _those_ deer aren’t. There’s no primal magic to drag out of them. Same as dogs, or horses, or those beet plants, or you and me.”

“Okay.”

“I didn’t _use the fawn_ for the spell,” she explains. “I did a spell _on_ the fawn, with another component, that removes a state from one thing so it can be applied to another. The fawn wasn’t an ingredient, it was a target.”

“And I was… the other target.”

“Right. If I had this staff, I could use a fawn as a _component._ Or… the blood, anyway. Come to think of it I might have needed a _second_ deer.”

“Wait, blood? Um. Ew. For what?”

“Well… that’s just it. Anything. What’s in it, is...” She struggles. “It’s like something that comes _before_ magic. Like light before it hits crystal, or mist, and turns into a rainbow. Trust me, it’s cool. Here, I’ll show you.”

She draws a short little knife from its strap on her boot and, cradling the staff in her elbow, makes a cut along her own palm. Soren winces sympathetically, but she pays no mind. She hands him the knife, which he takes reluctantly but still wipes on a cloth from his pocket. 

Blood pools in her palm. 

Moment of truth. 

When she wills it, the stone in the staff _connects_ with her own magical channels, and flushes them with its power, _changes_ them. If she lets go of the staff, they’ll go right back to how they were before, but with it, she can do this--

The blood shivers, despite her hand being steady as a rock. 

From it, the energy escapes, or is _pulled_ free, wispy and as black as a tear in the world, but glowing softly white at the edges. She passes it through the stone-altered pathway, and _decides._

_Sun._

She chooses sun, and the power from the blood _changes_ into the familiar heat of sun magic, no different from if she’d wrung it from an emberback spider. Just one ingredient, and it’s a spell she’s done a thousand times, so it makes the perfect experiment, with minimal variables.

_“Leaping-skipping-flames--”_

The magic comes to life in her bloodied hand and she flings the fire into the sky. It’s got nothing to react to, or bounce off of, so it just pops like a little firework, dim against the blue morning. Blinking the darkness from her eyes, she frowns at the spot where it fizzled. 

“Would have been cooler at night.” Claudia wraps her hand in a cloth. “Do you wanna try? ‘Cause you _co-ould._ ”

“I’ll… pass for now.” Soren’s expression badly conceals his discomfort, but he’s trying to be supportive, which is touching. “Is that really the most _practical_ spot to cut? Healing that is gonna be...”

“Magic can help that,” she dismisses quickly. “Where would _you_ get the blood?”

He shrugs. “Shoulder? Leg? Back of my arm? Ooh, forehead. Tiny cut, bleeds like _crazy_ but it heals right up.”

As they start to head back, she imagines how she might make a top with gaps in the sleeves, for access to more pragmatic patches of skin. Black, obviously, if only so it doesn’t stain. Still, there are logistical and health concerns. Her monthly cycle presents an interesting case, but there’s just not a lot to work with, and separating blood from tissue might be more trouble than it’s worth.

She’ll probably want to start thinking about avenues outside her own body if she’s going to do any serious amount of experimenting with this. A visit to the butcher up the hill is probably in order. She begins to contemplate the possibilities of leeches when, just as the dew-damp woods swallow them up, Soren says something accidentally brilliant.

“Hey, what would happen if you _didn’t_ change it?” 

“What do you mean?” Claudia asks.

“Like, you took the blood stuff, and you turned it into sun stuff, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess I was just wondering if the blood stuff can do anything by itself. I don’t know, maybe that’s dumb. I’m probably missing something obv--Clauds?”

She’s stopped in her tracks at the thought, letting him get several steps ahead before he notices. 

“Yeah,” Claudia says, skipping to catch up. “No, yeah.”

“You’re gonna go tell dad, I guess?”

“You know, you _could_ come with me. If you wanted to.” She watches his face, sees it tense but not freeze, and calls it progress. “I’m not gonna let _you_ hit the ground either, you know?”

Not pushing it any _more_ than she does is one of the hardest things she’s done all year, probably harder even than making the staff. Some days, the desire to have everyone together again is just _overwhelming_ and she gets so aggravated that Soren won’t take fifty steps and just…

But she can’t make him. They’ve talked about it -- fought about it, even, more than once -- and by now she knows the hard lines she can’t cross without making things worse.

She’s told him everything that’s hers to say, even the fact that dad broke the promise he made because he understood that waiting until Soren was ready was more important. So when will he _be_ ready?

_Keep the family together, take care of them,_ that was what she was supposed to do. Laying down this burden feels like abandoning mom, which complicates things. Once she stopped just trying to survive, she just walked around with no weight, impossibly light, worried she might float away, idle and lost. She kept trying to pick it back up again, fixated on a grudge, unable to decide against whom. Did Xadia do this to her family? Or did her family do this to itself? 

It took time to realize both things could be true. It took more time than _that_ to even begin to think about what other goals she might even have.

Soren deserves time, too. Still, the _waiting,_ and the feeling like she should be doing more (even though she knows better) is always there at the back of her thoughts, a habit not easily broken. 

He sighs (he knows perhaps too well how she feels by now) and they walk side by side on the path for awhile before he says:

“Maybe soon.”

* * *

**Autumn**

* * *

When the heat of summer finally recedes, it’s like the island itself is breathing out, the sigh of an exertion at last complete. The giant bluish evergreens keep changelessly dwarfing everything else in the woods, as if they exist outside of time itself, but the season is marked in gold-coin leaves on some of the smaller trees and bushes that dot the space between. 

Of course, just when Soren’s made up his mind, dad’s nowhere to be found.

_Not at home_ isn’t especially unusual, but he’s also not at the athenaeum, nor is he at the bathhouse, or the paper-house (Claudia is, but she doesn’t have any idea where he might be either.) So here Soren is, scaring snakes and squirrels away from the edges of paths he thinks his father might walk, if he’s decided to go for one.

It’s a kind of pointless gesture, to go looking. It’s not as if he’s _lost_ or _in danger,_ there’s no reason Soren couldn’t just wait for him to go home, but for the feeling that he’d rather be doing something than not. 

Looking instead of waiting helps keep off the _guilt,_ which doesn’t seem to care whether it’s deserved or not, it hangs around him like a bad smell, reminding him of the ways dad _wasn’t_ wrong, bringing up the horrible sense-memory of killing the illusion, and now drenching him in that wasted-time feeling of having dragged this out too long.

Maybe it _was_ his right, all of it, but somehow he doesn’t find any comfort in that.

Just _when_ he realized what he was doing is hard to say, but it’s definitely more than two weeks, and probably less than a month. If he had to pin it down, it might have been a little while after Claudia finished her staff.

_“So what you’re saying is, it’s a test?”_

Raum was the one who put it into words first. Soren tried to deny for about half a second and no more. No surprises there. If there’s anyone who’s been down in a hole even _remotely_ like this one…

Well.

He’s been _testing_ his father for months, almost since he arrived, certain that if he kept his distance and observed, dad would do something -- turn up at his house, make demands, try to get the locals on his side, twist Raum in his favor, use Claudia as a wedge... _something._ So ever since their brusque conversation about mom, Soren kept waiting and waiting for him to break, to cross a line, as if it was inevitable. 

Days, and weeks, and months, and nothing. The ladies in the paper-house, fond as they are of dad, have not once said a single word about it that Soren hasn’t asked for. _Claudia_ has _certainly_ weighed in of her own accord, but her arguments and her motives and her schedule are her own, she’s made that clear enough. 

If Deputy-Minister-of-Justice-Soren could have had even _one_ person back, even if it _was_ dad, he can’t pretend he wouldn’t have taken that deal in a heartbeat, and now Exiled-in-Paradise Soren, with his sister and his best friend propping him up, turns up his nose and won’t even give him a chance at a real conversation beyond pleasantries until _autumn?_

Apparently, what Soren’s been waiting for all this time is this confidence that dad really _might_ just let things go on forever like this. It makes him feel stupid that it took him so long to see it, and a little childish that the moment he realized he could have that, he didn’t want it anymore.

And: what if the reason dad’s had such an easy time respecting Soren’s lines in the sand is that he just doesn’t care, and he really never did? Obviously an unfair worry, given the lose-lose situation it creates, but it isn’t as if fear follows any rules.

Dad must know that last thing, too.

It’s past time to stop wondering.

Soren finally finds him just inside the treeline all the way in the east, just north of where the sheer rocks tumble down into sandy beach. He’s looking out, leaning on a black column of stone like it’s a lectern, and the glassy gray water below is his audience. 

Maybe he hears Soren approach, because his posture shifts, but he doesn’t turn. 

_In case I decide to turn and leave,_ Soren knows.

He doesn’t turn and leave. 

Instead, he stands next to his father, who used to look so big in every imaginable way, and he watches the ocean with him. 

“It’s quiet out here,” Soren says. And then, with an awkward cough and by way of clarification, “I was… looking for you. To talk. To… actually talk. And, listen, I guess? I know when I came to tell you about mom, there was stuff you wanted to say. So…”

He trails off there, thinking of what Claudia went through right in front of him, fury coming before the tears, so chaotic Soren wasn’t sure whether he was more scared of her or for her. The idea of mom was a load-bearing belief, the least he could do was not make her be the one to go and take it from dad in turn. 

Dad, by comparison, was placid on the surface, like he is now.

Viren clears his throat. Quietly, he says, “I only wish I knew where to start. I--You can imagine, I’ve had a lot of time to think and perhaps I finally understand the problem. I hoped we might… Your birthday’s in a few months, I admit I was hoping we might be on speaking terms by then.”

“What’s my birthday got to with anything?”

“I thought we could do it properly, for once. Not forgotten, or subsumed by Harrow’s, or both.” He must realize how odd it seems to say that, because he leaps a few steps back in his thinking. “When I was in that dungeon… I _know_ you know I was lying, about your mission. I think that goes without saying.”

“Still kind of a relief to hear you say it,” Soren says, halfway under his breath. 

“The rest though, was true. I forgot your birthday, gave you that mission and lied about it, and said your death was an acceptable price to pay; all for the same reason.” He speaks deliberately. 

Even now, it’s hard to listen to him and not worry that it’s all a ploy, but Soren came out here and started this and he’s going to see it through. 

“In every one of those moments,” says Viren, “I saw you as something akin to… my _own_ _arm._ Inherently a part of me.”

“What?” That familiar, greasy-prickly feeling of falling behind in a conversation comes up on Soren, but he reminds himself whose responsibility it is to be understood right now. 

He says what he keeps saying to Claudia, what he’s had _practice_ saying all these months, every time she gets ahead of him and then gives him that _look_ for not keeping up:

“You have to explain that better.”

Dad’s little scoff doesn’t go unnoticed, but he does try again. “I couldn’t see it then, but in hindsight… To praise you would be empty vanity. I forgot your birthday like I forgot my own. I was willing to sacrifice your life just like I didn’t see _mine_ as important in the face of the stakes. And as unforgiving as I have been about your failures--”

“I get it,” Soren interrupts, braces to be scolded for it, and isn’t. It’s clear now. So why does he still feel so awful?

“Your grandfather would say _don’t be sorry, be better._ Apologies were political strategy. _Sorry_ was an insult, coming from him. It meant he thought you were stupid enough to believe it.” He leans over the edge of the stone, elbows on the pitted surface, watching the clouds blow west. “I _don’t_ think that. That seems important. If it makes any difference, I _am_ sorry. All this is not an excuse, but an effort to prove that I know what it is I am sorry _for._ ”

“You mean, you don’t want me to think you’re just… doing that thing. Strategy,” Soren concludes, “Because you do kind of sound--”

“I’ve had a lot of time to practice,” he says, words coming out on the breeze of a self-deprecating laugh-sigh. “If it sounds rehearsed, it’s because it is. I still mean it.”

“Oh.” 

The white in the sky grows denser, shadows and gaps disappearing until there’s no blue left. When the wind kicks up, the ocean hassles the other side of the natural sea-wall. 

“It’s weird,” Soren starts, “how much easier it was to forgive you when you were dead. I guess it’s because you can’t do anything then. You’re whatever people want to think you were. I saw you were alive, and it was like starting all over again.”

Dad only listens, for a change. He doesn’t hurry him, he just lets Soren take his pauses and gather his words, even if it takes a little longer than Claudia does. 

Of course, Soren’s a bit practiced too. Never out loud, but it’s not as if he hasn’t given a lot of thought to what he wanted to say, when the time came.

“The way you made me think about everything, about myself,” Soren explains, “I didn’t even know what was real. I was so _scared_ you would do that again, and before I knew it, I’d be saying it was all fine. Then I’d have to _live up_ to that. I had to make sure it was coming from inside me, that it was all real, no matter what. There’s part of this I can’t explain, because it’s not my story, and you’re just going to have to go with me on this--”

“Very well.”

“--But all this resentment, and fear… yours, mine, everybody’s… it’s hurting so many people, and it’s gotta stop, for good. And if _I_ keep living in fear, I can’t ask anyone _else_ to stop. Plus, even with everything, and this probably sounds stupid, but...” Soren has to say it. He has to be honest, or he can’t ask anyone else to do that either. “I missed you, okay?”

It takes effort, but Soren looks up to gauge if there’s any reaction to that. It’s crazy, that’s _his father,_ blinking, swallowing. It’s not as if he’s crying, but it’s maybe the closest Soren’s seen to it.

He _did_ care, there can be no doubt.

Dad’s voice falters when he says, “Soren, if I make you feel that way, ever again…”

“I should punch you in the face?” 

“Well, perhaps _words,_ as a first-line defense?” His mouth tightens around the joke: “Then, if _that_ doesn’t work--”

They both laugh, maybe to discreetly exorcise a sob or two, and Viren grows solemn.

“You’ll have to tell me the rest,” he says. “What happened, before you left. I don’t know much more than what you said about your mother. Dragons in Del Bar? I can’t pretend that hasn’t haunted me. I did want to ask your _friend,_ but he’s so loyal to you, he’ll barely say a word to me, even in passing. I’d hold on to someone like that, if I were you.”

Soren looks away, along the line of trees that are the last, at the end of the land. “Claudia told me you’re _retired,_ or something, right? So, I don’t think you want to hear it.”

“Soren.”

“Fine. Just don’t do anything rash. It’s been awhile. I don’t know what it’s like now. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've reworked and zoomed in on a lot of the stuff I'm planning for the second half, and it is properly in progress now. :D


	21. Book Six: Ocean | Chapter One: Cold Seep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Nothing's ever the same," she said. "Be it a second later or a hundred years. It's always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans.”_
> 
> **― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane**

**Book Six: Ocean**

**Chapter 1: Cold Seep**

Jowan runs as fast his little legs can carry him. Yamina _could_ go faster. In fact, with how fear shocks power into her body, it’s almost hard _not_ to go faster, but she wills herself to match his speed and a step ahead, so that if anything comes at them from the front, it hits her first. 

Despite the cold, his hand is sweaty in hers and his fingers are slack as he focuses on his feet rather than his hands. That’s okay, she’ll hold on for both of them. She splits her time between looking ahead and looking back at him, making sure he doesn’t stumble.

She’s seen the way everyone looked at them -- _especially_ Jowan. By the time Yamina got to Doctrina Limen she wasn’t the first eleven-year-old to be walked through those doors, and she probably won’t be the last, but that was supposed to be as young as it went, they said. 

Jowan, while they were there, was the youngest by four whole years. 

The Ministry of Justice must have been _really_ mad at dad.

Seven years old, and a _young_ seven, (too young when their family was catapulted into comfort to remember what it was like before) Jowan made the other human residents uncomfortable. They tried to hide it, but they did a bad job. Something about him just brought out the humanity in people desperately trying to not to be quite so human.

If it _weren’t_ for Jowan she’d have stayed. She could manage, surely, but Jowan shouldn’t have to, and that inarguable truth was reflected in the faces of even the hardest-hearted among them. The escape was a good job, for a couple of kids, but better attempts than theirs had failed. 

No, Yamina is sure: They’d never have gotten if those on guard duty hadn’t quietly turned away and allowed it, no matter what it would cost them. 

Then there are the _elves,_ who were clearly not consulted.

There weren’t any at Doctrina Limen. Not in the buildings, not on the grounds. An elf was involved in the trip over, and until the escape, that’s the last time a pair of pointy ears was in view. Some must have been out there, patrolling some unseen border, because they didn’t get far without moonstriders carrying white-haired agents nipping at their heels.

“There!” She hisses to Jowan as the woods grow denser around them. She smelled the plants before, and now she sees them. “Into the mintron bushes.”

She covers her brother like a turtle shell, crawling _over_ him as they squeeze into the bushes to make sure he doesn’t get too scraped up, or too cold if they have to wait like this for a while. With a mind to be quiet about it, she pinches off a bunch of leaves and rubs them between her fingers. 

Nice-smelling to humans but unbearably pungent to anything with a stronger nose, dad used to crush them and leave them around the wall of the old well to keep the animals away so they wouldn’t fall in and poison it. Whether or not moonstriders are at all similar to dogs beyond their appearance, Yamina has no idea, but it’s not as if there’s any chance of out-running them. 

This is her only hope: some smelly leaves. 

The animal footfalls and snuffling grow louder at first, and she can feel Jowan’s heart beat through his back, fast as a rabbit’s. Louder, and then, just when she’s sure they _must_ have found them, quieter. They never get past the edge of the thicket, the moonstriders whining in protest against approaching the odor.

One agent mutters to another, something about wasting time.

They fan out and away. 

Dawn brings temporary relief -- no one in pursuit, not at first. The second night is less frightening than the first, and a little warmer, when Yamina catches a pennaviper and sublimates its feathers into a barrier against the wind.

Not bad, for her third time ever doing dark magic.

Late afternoon the next day brings Branchfolk out to hunt them. When Jowan starts to look around, she can tell he’s hearing them before he even starts to tug on her shirt.

“Listen,” Jowan whispers. “They’re talking to the trees.”

She didn’t hear it at first, because she's hearing something _else,_ a pleasing hum that acts like a compass. It invades dreams along with images of tired, frightened people dressed in strange clothes, a long long walk, the taste of smoke on provisions, and the kind of soft, welcoming darkness found beneath a blanket on a snowy night. 

Jowan can’t hear it, has no idea what she’s talking about, but he understands there’s no going back to Duren now, and he trusts her to be right about this.

 _Hopefully_ , she’s right about this.

Now that he’s pointed out the Branchfolk, she can’t _not_ hear them, and with every trunk and branch an enemy, staying in the woods is not an option. 

“Jow,” Yamina says, calling him out of the grimly zoned-out trance he’s been in more and more since the arrest. She usually doesn’t bother him when he’s like this. If there’s somewhere he’s going, it’s probably better than here, and it means he doesn’t complain.

“Yeah?”

“If you're right, we can't hide here."

He just looks at her, searching, waiting for her to tell him how she’ll fix it like she’s fixed it every time he’s been tired or hungry or cold. 

She’s seen maps before, but her memory is too hazy to know if they’re close to the big lake, or the desert. How fast does tree-talking work? They’ve been staying in the dell until now, afraid of the climb, but if that’s the only way...

“Might need to go up the mountain, at least for a little bit.” She stops long enough to crouch down, hands on the clammy skin of his upper arms. “It’ll be cold, but I don’t think the elves will follow us up there. S’that okay? Can you handle it?” 

She watches him weigh a chance to lose their pursuers against the harder terrain, a bizarre expression on such a young face. It doesn’t help that neither of them has ever _been_ up a mountain, their knowledge is mostly theoretical. Yamina knows it’s snowy, but the last time it snowed in Duren, she was too young to remember it. 

What it feels like is a mystery.

Being chased down like prey, though, _definitely_ feels terrible.

Auntie Lettie once got in trouble for telling her that dying of the cold is supposed to be peaceful. _Don’t talk to the kids about that stuff,_ her dad scolded, but he was too late. Now, something she was never supposed to hear is the deciding factor. Better to go peaceful in the cold than get taken again by the elves. 

Jowan doesn’t have that bit of information, but he nods anyway. 

The clothes and slippers of Doctrina Limen aren’t suited to the mountains, but one of the few spells Yamina remembers from home is a fire one, practical and easy, dad did it every morning to start the stove. He got his spiders from a jar, but they’re common enough on this mountain, skittering out of practically every crack and crevice. 

Before long, they start to look like friends, like little candles lighting her way. It’s touch and go, but there’s always another spider, always another fire, always another chance to survive, and at least the elves seem to have given up, so they can focus on other threats. 

By the time they make their way to where the range ends, she knows that spell like the back of her hand. It’s kept them warm, boiled their water, killed their predators, cooked their meat, and generally saved both of their lives a dozen times at least. 

They lose track of the days, keeping off the paths and carved-out passes until they’re sure it’s all abandoned, and making much better time once they do. By the time they descend to the meadows, their heads, shorn at Doctrina Limen, have grown a solid half inch or so of soft, thankfully _warm_ hair. 

“We match again,” Jowan says one morning, referring to when he refused a haircut for a whole year. For a time, when a long golden hair was found shed on the floor, no one could tell which of them it once belonged to.

The fuzz looks cute on him. Yamina imagines it probably looks stupid on _her_ and is glad she doesn’t have to see it. There are other changes too, she doesn’t need a mirror to know. If her parents’ spirits are out there watching over her, she hopes they feel stupid for teasing her about _“baby fat,”_ her body now retreating away from threadbare clothes. 

Well, dad might feel bad. Mom would probably just say she’s _building character._

The lower foothills and plains of the south coast are beautiful. The view of the ocean at the bottom of the cliffs is simply the _biggest_ thing she’s ever seen. It can’t possibly go on forever, but it certainly feels like it does, to look at it. 

What’s odd is, the hum still calls her _south_ as well as east.

An ancient, crumbling bridge spans a river from one rolling prairie to another, and on the other side of it, the other shoe finally drops.

A Sun dragon -- small, for a dragon, but still a dragon -- catches sight of them, and that’s that. It’s not two days before the long-view is interrupted by a squad of Sunfire soldiers who gain on them ploddingly-but-inevitably, almost certainly intending to wear them out or corner them against the sea.

Whatever cue she’s following, though, it feels like they’re close, _so_ close. 

There’s nothing they can do but hurry, and hope it’s enough.

* * *

The whole thing turns out to be the blind leading the blind. 

Some part of Soren expected that dad would know something about fishing. Don’t all dads? It seemed like that was just a dad thing, which is dumb, he knows it’s not as if a man has a child and is suddenly gifted with the skill of angling, but still. 

It’s just one of a million little things in the gulf between the way other guys were with their dads and the way it was for Soren. There’s comfort in knowing that missing out on this, at least, was due to genuine cluelessness.

Here, between Manawa and mainland where the island-broken waves are small enough for a sturdy rowboat, they’re figuring it out as they go. That’s not so bad, even if they _have_ bonked into the bridge twice and totally failed to catch anything but hunks of seaweed. 

“Not as if your grandfather ever fished,” complains dad under his breath, untangling the magic-strengthened silk strands braided into a fishing line. “I swear this was fine a moment ago. Damned thing has a mind of its own--”

“Why didn’t he? Fish, I mean. It’s kinda nice. I know General Amaya likes it.”

“Soren, things didn’t used to be…” He sighs. “Fishing was a pastime for soldiers and laborers. It wasn’t _done._ If someone saw _my father_ sitting in a boat for no good reason _,_ they’d assume he’d lost his mind.”

“Wait, but he went out fox-hunting, right? With King Meihanyr and the others? Wasn’t that a thing?”

“Of course,” Viren says, in the same tone he might confirm any other basic fact of the universe. 

“Well… what’s the difference?” 

By Soren’s reckoning, the important parts are the same: in both cases, people go out into the territory of the animals, and take them one by one for sport, or to hone skills, but not out of necessity.

If he’d been needing fish to _eat_ , Soren would have brought a net, not a rod and a line. The neighbor up the hill who lent out the boat even offered them one, a little confused at what it was they were actually doing, and why.

“Shades of Harrow, before he was king,” says Viren with a tight smile that draws lines around his mouth. He chuckles through his nose. “I don’t think there was a single person in that castle who didn’t find some reason, at _least_ once, to say, _Prince Harrow, that’s simply not done,_ and of course Harrow would always just say, _I don’t see why not,_ in that tone that made everyone feel like idiots when they tried to explain the inexplicable.”

Soren snorts, finding it easy to imagine. The man was a giant, no two ways about it.

Easy silence overtakes them like a brief fog, both lost in their own thoughts as they wait for something to happen in the water below. Thinking of one king turns to thinking of another, and for the first time, Soren wonders not only _when_ Ezran will be permitted to rule on his own back home, but, with new perspective, _if._

It’s strange, how _there-are-things-dad-was-right-about_ has turned out to be almost as hard to fully accept as _there-are-things-dad-was-wrong-about_ was, a year and a half ago. 

Between one strand of thought and another, he notices dad’s frowning, staring at some spot in the distance over Soren’s left shoulder.

“Dad?” Soren says, voice low and urgent. He turns to face the mainland beach and the same activity on the cliffside that’s caught his father’s eye catches his too. “Are we still invisible? I mean, to… elves, or whatever?”

“Of course. As far as I’m aware, the boats are hidden by the same magic that protects the island, and the bridge.”

Soren picks up the oars and starts rowing toward the pebbled mainland shore. 

“What are you doing!?” Viren splutters, a demand. 

“Getting a better look. You said the magic’s on the boat. So, it stays covered even if we get closer, right?”

“Yes, but--”

“If someone’s in trouble,” Soren pants with the exertion of getting them moving properly, “we have to help them.”

“Soren, if there’s anyone there, it’s probably _elves._ Best to keep our distance.” 

“If they could see through whatever this magic is, they would have found Manawa by now,” Soren argues. “It’s been here for what, a thousand years?”

 _“Unless,”_ hisses Viren, “The Far Reaches didn’t _have_ enough elves for it to be a problem. You yourself said you only ran into the Rootfolk. Don’t be foolish!”

“No promises.” Soren grits his teeth when he smiles. 

The waves are in his favor, at least, and it’s not long before he’s made enough gains to stop, twist around, and reevaluate.

From farther out, Soren _thought_ he saw _children_ on the cliff, two of them, picking their way down the jagged face in that cautious-but-unrelenting way only kids can really pull off, but surely that was impossible. From here, he’s certain of it, and it no longer matters how impossible it is, because it’s _happening._

Briefly he has the insane thought of climbing up to help them, but he’s pretty sure that wouldn’t actually help. What _would_ help is being at the bottom to catch them, once they get far enough down -- but even with rowing and the sea pushing them toward the beach, it seems likely the kids’ll decide to jump on their own before he can make it.

He’s about a second from calling out to them, the breath of the yell already in his lungs when he sees the elves round the cliff’s grassy edge and start to descend in pursuit.

Closer now, he can tell they’re in Sunfire armor, which is very much _not_ meant for what they’re trying to do. That’ll slow them down enough to let the kids hit bottom first, sure, but where then? 

Soren’s blood freezes when the taller one jumps from too high. To her credit, she comes down at an angle and lets herself crumple. However much it _had_ to hurt, she doesn’t stay down long, dusting herself off and hollering up at the smaller kid to let go.

He skitters a few feet lower first, but he obeys, and that must be the end of his blind trust. 

It takes a minute for understanding to click, for Soren to figure out what’s happening: The girl, dragging the boy out into the waves, the boy protesting, the girl’s shouted argument lost to the wind and water but her impatience more than evident in her posture.

“She can see the bridge,” says Viren in a half-whisper.

 _And he can’t,_ Soren adds in his mind.

Almost there, but so are the elves. Tempting as it is to leap out and swim, it’d still be slower than getting the boat the rest of the way, and Winter’s Turn is just two days away -- it’s too cold to be unnecessarily drenched, especially if he’s expecting a fight.

Far too late it registers, what those clothes remind him of.

Where they must have come from.

“Soren, wait--” demands his father in a low hiss, but Soren’s not interested. 

Dad didn’t see the place. He'd understand if he did, and it's fine if he doesn't get it, but he’ll have to live with being ignored for now.

A blade meant more for utility than fighting is already halfway out of its cover as he vaults into knee-high water, out of both the boat _and_ the protective spell that’s kept them hidden until this moment. He _knows_ he’s outside of it, because every single eye lands on him as he does what must look like an impossible step right out of thin air.

He may as well have jumped from a cliff or picked a fork in a river for the distinct sense of setting something in motion that can’t be undone. He knows this feeling from the hill, from the spire, from Doctrina Limen. No going back.

So, he goes forward.

“How about picking on someone your own size?” He says, more confidently than he feels, partially because he’s always _wanted_ an excuse to say that. Thing is, there’s six of them and one of him. He’s good, but no one’s _that_ good. Drawing them off the kids was a success, but what’s he to do with their attention, now that he’s got it?

Soren resists the urge to look back. If dad’s hastily rowing back out to sea, he doesn’t want to know.

“You!” Shouts one of the Sunfire elves, finger pointed in some combination of accusation and recognition, though Soren couldn’t pick _her_ out of a lineup. Her eyes go dark and shining gold, fire rising to the surface of her skin, voice a growl. “I remember you! You’re that deputy that disappeared! Do you have any idea how much trouble you caused?!” 

The others slip into heat-being after her, the water hissing on contact as they advance into the surf, bubbling around them. The way it feels to look at them like this reminds him of Pyrrah opening her mouth and pouring fire on a town, an animal fear, something ancient. He’s not going to freeze, but that’s down to training, nothing else.

He doesn’t want to get soaked, but the way the water’s sapping heat off them, stepping backward into where it’s deeper is the only game in town. Maybe all he can do is keep them from the kids long enough for the girl to convince the boy onto the bridge, but--

From behind comes a single, soft, _exasperated_ word, just at the edge of the commotion.

_“Damn.”_

His father’s mantled shape slips into his peripheral vision, the bottom of his cloak curling in the water around him like smoke.

Under the layers it’s hard to see him move, but he must have reached into one of his many pockets. Confusion looks strange on the elves’ faces when they're like this. His eyes light up, and he throws a handful of something like glittering ball-bearings into the water.

The elves finally cotton on far too late. The words come out twisted by the magical vortex, incomprehensible to everyone but the speaker. Magic spreads across the water around Viren in a ripple of indigo fog, like he is a stone thrown into a pond. 

Soren winces, but the leading edge sweeps through him with no more than a brief chill, entirely harmless if he doesn’t count the goosepimples. 

The elves are another story.

The glow beneath their skin goes out. One by one, the spell strikes them like a candle douter. No -- more than _out,_ it goes _black,_ shiny and smooth. 

What was lava is not merely extinguished: it is _stone,_ like the obsidian General Amaya used to bring back from the breach in her pockets as gifts.

Only the last two struck have a moment to scream before they can’t, anymore. That spiderwebbed lattice of heat must go more than skin deep, throats and lungs and hearts just as frozen as their faces and limbs. Blood seeps out around the edges where stone meets flesh, bodies cut through and held unmoving by the spiderweb-scaffold of fresh volcanic glass.

Viren blinks away the dark in his eyes and stumbles slightly, catches himself on the edge of the boat.

“Dad?” Soren doesn’t know if he means _dad, are you okay,_ or _dad, what was_ that. 

Soren imagines they'll fall rigid into the cloudy water and be impossible to find soon enough. There’s something chilling about the power of waves to erase. 

Is there any of that, in how Manawa’s been safe all this time?

If he could swim forever without getting cold or out of breath, what might he find in the trenches between here and there?

“I’m fine. _Go,”_ Viren urges, and the last thing Soren sees as he turns to jog up the beach is dad, wading toward the elves, shoulders up around his ears, helpless against the chill seeping in through his clothes. He mutters something that might be _“So much for ‘retired.’”_

The girl, deciding she’s got nowhere to run, puts her body between Soren and the boy. 

“If you want him, you go through me, and--and I know magic too!”

Soren stops. He gets down on one knee, hands up, palms out, knife on the ground. He does consider that she seems entirely willing to pick it up and turn it on him, but if he can’t disarm an underfed pre-teen, he probably deserves whatever scars he gets.

“I’m here to help,” he says, as reassuring as he can, totally unsure whether it comes across the way he means it, or just sounds like manipulation. They’ll have been through enough to give them doubt.

The girl looks at his head. Her mouth moves slightly as she counts his fingers.

“Why’d they know you?” She demands. “Who are you?”

“I…” Soren swallows down the urge to lie. He takes a stab in the dark that things haven’t changed _that_ much. “Name’s Soren. I used to work for Minister Opeli.”

She draws further away from him, but he sort of expected that. 

_“Used to._ I... don’t think she’d let me keep _this,”_ he says as proof, rubbing the side of his face with what he hopes is a non-threatening smile. “Haven’t seen any agents with beards, have you?”

“No,” she admits. “But if you don’t work for them, why are you here?”

“I live here,” he says, pointing out at Manawa. “Er, out there. Across the bridge. There’s lots of humans. Even another one who’s been to… where you were, I think.”

“Liar!” The boy pipes up from behind her. “You can’t live there! It’s just a big black rock. There’s no bridge. This is all a trick.”

“Jowan! Shut up! I told you there _is_ a bridge!” She looks past Soren at where Viren’s come up behind him, wet clothes noisily dragging beach pebbles. “What’d you do to them?”

“I killed them,” Viren answers blandly.

“With dark magic.” Her voice wavers slightly as the adrenaline starts to wear off.

“Yes.”

The girl looks incisively at him, though what she is evaluating, Soren cannot guess.

“Good,” she concludes. “That’s what I thought. I’m Yamina. This is my brother, Jowan. Our dad was a dark mage too.”

“What was his name?” Dad asks, because of course he does. It’s not that big a club, Soren knows that much, especially at the upper levels.

“Chadwick, of Duren.”

“I recall him fondly. ” A pinched smile briefly crosses his face, but he shakes his head and it evaporates. “I’m… sorry to hear he’s passed.”

Soren gets back on topic. He lays it all out for Jowan. “Only humans who’ve done dark magic can see Manawa from here, like your sister, and my dad. And… me, I guess, once. But you can see it when you get there, and it’s safe there for people like us. You don’t have to use the bridge if you don’t want to -- we have a boat. Your choice.”

“Jowan?” Yamina asks. 

“The boat,” Jowan decides, openly exhausted. Soren wonders if he won’t fall asleep the moment he sits down.

“You heard him,” she agrees. 

“Deal,” Soren says, and he shakes Yamina's hand. It is tiny, all bones, bloodied from the drop and covered in the scars of spider bites. 

Soren looks back at his father, who displays only a flash of concern about the whole thing. His small shrug is agreement enough. 

Stepping into the boat after he’s lifted each kid into it in turn, Soren catches a glint of gold that resolves into the shape of a hilt. 

One of the elves had a sunforge blade. Presumably she doesn’t, anymore. Dad’s face is an open challenge to question the logic. _Not as if they’ll be needing it._ If Soren’s honest with himself, he _does_ kind of want to try it out.

“We have a little ways to go, to get back,” says Viren, once they’re all settled, the four of them, spoils and fishing equipment tangled against one wall. “Would you… like to hear a story? About your father?”

Yamina and Jowan look at one another and nod vigorously, and as dad sets the stage, they finally actually _look_ like children.

* * *

Unlike everything else on this damned continent, the Ash-Knife has had the decency not to _change_ for the last few hundred years. It stands as a thing with no concept of time, a sheer white rock planted in the black sand like a thousand-foot high tooth in the gum of the world.

Aaravos dawdled _so_ long in Kannati. Too long, long after he had all the information he was looking for. It was _hard_ to leave the now-warm-again, welcoming halls of stone for the road ahead, and for many weeks he found one excuse after another to linger just a little longer. Sal certainly made it easy to do. Kannati was once famous for hospitality for a reason.

Worse, when he finally moved on, he turned _away_ from the desert and into the deep woods. Up the coast alongside the old archipelago, he found quiet where there used to be a riot of life, the only notable activity on the submerged islands that of the glittering Saltdragons, all too young and too isolated to recognize him even if he _weren’t_ staying hidden beneath cloaks and gloves. 

The black tundra was a dismal crossing, pockets of land seemingly devoid of magic, dead zones in the flow, places of stagnation. It was always stark, even when Xadia was one land, but not like this. (On the bright side, the fact that he’s begun to detect the current at all, no matter how faintly, seems a promising sign.)

Once upon a time, the Skywings held their fleeting Wintermarkets there, and Elkult Crones of the Branchfolk would make pilgrimages for their rituals. This time, nothing was left for Aaravos to find but the X-shaped frames that once held many-limbed twig-figures, the wood rotting away, impossible to permit if they were still in use.

Aboard a Skywing pirate vessel he sailed deep into the Longnose Inlet, right beneath the eye of Queen Zubeia herself. With the gems he brought from Kannati, he not only bought passage and discretion, but more than enough tafia to pour each night to get them talking. Nothing to fear, they said, in passing the spire. _They’re all_ busy _these days_ . _No one’s paying much attention to the likes of us. Leaves lots of opportunity._

All the while, he’s been telling himself this was necessary, that he had to gather information, to rule things out, to investigate, to make sure he didn’t make any rash mistakes, but the evidence is plain in the route he chose: one that kept him far from the places with the most baggage.

Staring down the Ash-Knife just after sunset, he can’t keep the truth from himself. He’s been avoiding this. It’s the kind of foolishness Aaravos prefers to think he’s above. 

There are two orders of business here, both equally imposing, neither more pressing. The choice is basically a whim, his sole logic being that if this first one fails, the other will no longer be of any importance.

It doesn’t take him long to find a nest of soulfangs. 

There are more of them here than ever, though what has made their numbers swell, he cannot guess.

Aaravos dilates the link to Viren as much as he can, pressing against it with a demand for attention, and receiving back a scrape of irritation underlaid with a hum of concern. This is the purpose of it, the reason he bothered convincing Viren to stop holding it shut to begin with. If something happens to him here, it’s the only way anyone will know.

For a fleeting moment, he regrets not sharing more of his plans before he embarked on this journey, a regret that can only bleed through the link and prompt a march of alarm in response. 

Did Ziard feel this way, when _he_ disappeared without a word? 

Or does Aaravos just _hope_ he had a moment of doubt, a thought spared the same as Aaravos does for Viren and Claudia, surprising himself with his own sentiment. He never expected to get _attached._

Then again, stranger things have happened. He never expected to _lose,_ either.

Nothing can be accomplished if he is forever trapped in this flesh-marionette with most of him yet locked away, and he cannot be released if he does not know _where_ the rest of him is. Between the copied texts on Manawa, the archives of Kannati, and his assessment of his prison, he is very nearly certain that this will be harmless to him, and in so being, perfectly confirm his condition.

Still, that tiny sliver of doubt…

There’s no room for it, no choice in whether to eliminate it. He scoops up a snake by the middle and lets it writhe. 

“Go on then,” he says to it. “I know what you want. Try to take it.”

As if to obey him, it swings in his grasp and strikes at the only exposed flesh it can find: his other arm.

Fangs sink in, and…

 _Nothing._ A pinch, a startled hiss, and nothing more. 

He was right. _He was right!_ It isn’t just a crazy suspicion, he wasn’t striking at shadows, _he was right!_

On some strange instinct, he looks west. In a technical sense, he isn’t _there,_ but beyond the woods and the mountains and the open wound of a border is a dead volcano with a caldera lake at the top. Now he knows that if the right person, with the right intention, were to pierce its glassy surface...

Laughing, he swings the snake against the rock wall of the butte to stun it, finishes the break in its neck with his fingers, and tucks its body neatly into a coil, wrapping it in several layers of fabric. He’ll be going back to Manawa with the news, and well… waste not. 

After all, it’s customary to bring back something nice from one’s travels.

Curiosity and confusion buzz through the connection from Viren, likely responding to his buoyant thrill, and he answers them with a flood of victorious reassurance. There is no way to explain the details yet. 

The road to freedom remains long, but he can _see_ the curves of it ahead once more, for the first time since the loss at the storm spire.

He takes a measure of cold, dry desert air into his lungs. 

One down, one to go. Is two out of two too much to hope for? Perhaps not.

* * *

Starting over is never easy, but after all the practice she’s gotten this year, Sigrin’s getting very good at it. 

“Eight,” she says to Hasima, interrupting a gloomy silence at their shared table. It’s shaping up to be a Winter’s Turn even more miserable than last year, if such a thing is possible. “I keep finding eights.”

“Hm?” Hasima looks up from studying her reflection in a glass of near-black wine.

“Eight months since the first raid, eight new locations, eight times I’ve tried to send a letter back and had to tear it up for safety, and two-times-eight _established_ mages gone.” Sixteen, captured, or in the case of Eistir and Chadwick, killed to set an example, but Sigrin doesn’t want to bring up _that_ disaster again.

Hasima considers this. “In Neolandia, eight used to be an unlucky number. No one puts much stock in it these days, but…” She shrugs noncommittally. 

Sigrin might be inclined to agree with the superstition. She can’t count the students, component merchants, and allies they’ve lost, but with her luck, she wouldn’t be surprised if it was divisible by eight as well. 

What’s insane to her is that people keep coming -- and not only for pallets to sleep on or components to study with, but to ask what they can do to _help._ Even people who’ve never done a spell in their lives know someone who has, or someone who’s benefitted from one. 

As the owner of their latest hideout put it: _It’s not exactly pretty to look at, is it, dark magic? But neither is a slaughterhouse, and still I’d want to pitch in to fight if sausage was on the line -- and that’s not saving anyone’s life._

It’s almost enough to give a person the kind of hope they’re _supposed_ to have on a snowy holiday.

The motley assemblage at The Dusty Pigeon this Winter’s Turn Eve hails from all over, the most vulnerable being her own countrymen (with nowhere to go back to) though there’s no shortage of Neolandians avoiding their frozen encampment, and as dragons have put more pressure on Duren to send its human mages to the border, there are more than a few of theirs with her now as well.

They may not be her wards in the traditional sense of the word, but the majority are much younger than she is, and they’ve put their trust in her, something that seems more and more unbelievable with every setback and loss.

Do they really think she can do anything for them? Or is it that they just don’t see any other choice? Are there more than a few people in this room who even see her when they look at her, or do they all just see whatever they find comforting?

It’s stranger and stranger, trying to know when to resist this metamorphosis into a symbol of stubborn resilience, and when it’s better to give in.

Hasima should have had her coming-of-age ceremony this year. As the crown princess, she should have had a _parade,_ she should have been draped in gold and jewels, surrounded by her brothers and sisters, hosting a party for the ages that would have lasted a week and blanketed Neolandia in color and music.

Instead, she spent her birthday lying in wet dirt in a root cellar, wracked with fever after a wound from a Moonshadow elf’s poisoned blade. Of all the moments in the past year that Sigrin has been glad to have Rayla on her side, her quick work with the antidote stands out brightest of all.

(If nothing else, it did melt the ice between the two of them, at least a little.)

“Um…” Rayla slips into the fourth chair (the third occupied by Ben, already asleep on his folded arms) with a bottle and three tiny glasses. “Got this from Ethari, because I thought Winter’s-turn Eve was some kind of _happy holiday_ for you all, but you sure don’t look like you’re celebratin’.”

“Piss off,” Hasima says, her accent turning expletives almost musical. “You’re only cheerful because _you’re_ seeing Prince Charming later -- and before you say anything, yes, it counts even if it’s _not_ in the flesh. He must really be something, I don’t think there’s a man anywhere on this continent I’d go out in _that_ for.”

Hasima gestures to the street-level windows up near the ceiling, so caked with snow it’s hard to tell if it’s night or day.

“Lucky for you I don’t feel the same way, so we can get some decent intelligence for once,” Rayla snipes. “Last time, he said somethin’ was _happening_ up there for Winter’s Turn.”

“...Which is tomorrow. What are we supposed to do on that kind of notice? He couldn’t have told us a little earlier?”

“This the _first_ clear night in weeks, and on the last one, I had to stay with _you,_ in case you’ve _forgotten._ ” Rayla justifies, pouring three shots of pearlescent liquid and passing the other two to Sigrin and Hasima. They all drink to nothing in particular before she goes on. “What was I supposed to do, fly up inty the sky and blow the clouds away so he can see the stars?”

“Well, if that’s the _only_ way you can get him to see stars _\--”_

“Alright, alright, enough.” The last time Sigrin saw Prince Callum in person he was knee-high to a cricket and there some topics of conversation one prefers to stop before they get started. “Frankly, I’ll take what I can get. If it leads to something, _anything_ we can use, it’s nothing to sneeze at. I wouldn’t mind starting this year at least a _little_ right. And if it’s for Winter’s Turn, it might not _just_ be tomorrow.”

She pours herself another of whatever that moon-liquor is as she remembers the endless to-do of the holidays she spent with Viren in that castle, seldom a moment’s peace. This is worse, but not by much.

As if on cue, the invisible barrier outside is breached, and the ensorcelled teakettle behind the bar screeches in alarm. Every one of the fifteen or so conversations in the room stops immediately. Ben is awake with brass knuckles on in the blink of an eye, sparing only a moment to glance at the bottle and be offended he wasn’t offered any. 

Rayla’s ears go back and her hand drops to the hilt of what Sigrin and Hasima jokingly called _the birthday blades,_ her foster-father’s replacements for the weapons she lost. ( _Now, with more embellishments!_ Sigrin jokes to herself.) In the months since she turned seventeen, she’s gotten _very_ good with them.

Even a regular human could hear a pin drop, but no one’s careless enough to drop one.

Outside at the street level, there’s no harsh knock, no kicked-in door, no _Ministry of Justice! Everyone on the ground with your hands on your heads!_

Instead, there is... singing. Four voices, maybe five, childlike in their pitch and softness and badly out of key, but the song is a standard for Winter’s-turn candle-singers. 

Sigrin looks at the barkeep, and he looks back at her.

A trap?

Surely elves wouldn’t know the song? Human soldiers might, but even the _new-and-improved_ Katolis isn’t cruel enough to recruit boys young enough to sing that high as anything but squires and trainees. She supposes they could be singing, while agents lurk just behind, but that seems like a lot of effort to go to, and not at all their usual M.O.

The bartender re-lights the fire under the tea-less teakettle, the signal to act natural, and he approaches the door. Whatever tentative conversations people start, everyone’s got one eye on the stairs, ready, just in case.

He exclaims, an incoherent sound swallowed by laughter, and then his feet can be seen stepping out of the way of a thunderous rattle down the wooden steps. There’s one set of fancy-but-dirty shoes, then another, and two more after, laughing and red-cheeked children rushing down into the dim dining room.

Sigrin imagines an establishment as dubious as this one probably hasn’t seen kids this young in decades, if ever -- the oldest can’t be more than fourteen, and the youngest looks to be around eight. Something about them just lights up the space. Everyone returns to their business, if cautiously, except Hasima.

Hasima, who Sigrin realizes a beat too late bears a _striking_ resemblance to all four of them.

“HAPPY WINTER’S TURN!” 

It’s a chorus, spoken by the eldest, shrieked by the youngest, and somewhere in between for the middle children. 

Hasima’s on her feet, fury written on her face in flushes of red ink.

“Nadea!” She accuses. 

The eldest girl snaps to attention, spine suddenly steel, features blank. “Yes.”

Hasima scolds. “What did I tell you?”

“D--” The girl swallows. “Don’t look for you.”

The other children catch on. 

“Akel! Darpan! Omaja!” Hasima barks like a general, and they straighten in turn. “What did I _tell you?”_

“Listen to Nadea,” they chorus, the oldest of them no older than ten. 

The youngest girl, probably Omaja, speaks out of turn, honeyed eyes blazing. “Nadea said we had to cheer you up!”

“Omaja!” Hisses the Nadea, a scold.

Under Hasima’s stare, she turns her dark eyes back to the floor.

Hasima’s only a couple inches taller than her sister, but still manages to look a mile high. She’s red-faced drunk and still drawing upon a lifetime of nobility, every inch in this moment the queen she ought to be. _“Why_ did I tell you not to look for me?”

“So… so we could be safe,” Nadea answers.

“I can’t _hear you_ when you talk to the _floor.”_

Nadea looks up, eyes wet but full of steel. She sounds like a soldier. “So we could be safe!”

“Why?!”

“Because after… after dad… and Kasef…” Nadea swallows, before going on resolutely. “We can’t lose anyone else.”

“That’s right.” Hasima confirms, her face inches from Nadea’s. “And what did I charge you with?”

“Care of the kids.” Nadea recites. 

“That’s…” Hasima nods on a deep sigh. All the energy leaves her voice, its poison neutralized. She gathers her younger sister into her arms. Sigrin can barely hear what she says next. “You too, Nadea. You have to take care of yourself, too.”

They pull apart.

“We missed you,” says Akel, tugging on Hasima’s sleeve. “It’s Winter’s Turn.”

Half the people in the house watch out of the corners of their eyes as Hasima drops to her knees, gathers the lot of them into a hug, and calls to the barkeep for hot cocoa. 

“Pull up some chairs,” says Hasima, gesturing for Ben and Rayla to scooch closer to Sigrin, making room, which Ben does grudgingly, drowsily. “But Nadea--”

Nadea looks up. 

“Do _not_ let it happen ag--”

The teapot goes again, a screech that smothers everything. Even the children know, on some instinct, to go silent. 

That _bang-bang-bang_ rhythm on the door is unmistakable, a hammer, a beating of fists against the wood. 

“Back wall!” Sigrin calls, the only sound after that of chairs scraping and feet scurrying where she’s told them. Her eyes light up, crushed components oozing in her hand. 

****

* * *

A hidden spiral path up inside the rock leads unerringly as always to the flat top of the Ash-Knife. Inside the Nightroad tunnel, all light is not only _forbidden,_ but magically extinguished, no matter the source. Aaravos only knows the latter because at his most furiously fed up and contrarian, he _tried_.

 _One must trust the stars, and follow the path to its inevitable conclusion,_ says this ritual. _Never mind how far along the way you are, or when you will reach the end._

On a purely practical level, the period spent in darkness serves as excellent adjustment for the eyes. If a winged elf were to fly to the top, they wouldn’t see half as many distant stars above as someone who passed through the Nightroad first. 

In the middle is always a long stretch of what can only be described as _boredom._ Step after identical step, one hand along the smooth, uniform curve of the stone wall, with nothing at all to see, it’s hard not to fall into a kind of walking trance. 

As dark as it is, though, Aaravos feels brighter and more hopeful than he has in a long time. 

For hundreds of years he’s felt a sick cast of futility over his plans, a leaden hook in his stomach. This was his true prison: the thought that Ziard died for nothing, that Aaravos would never learn what he knew, why he did what he did, and therefore could never pick up that baton and carry forward that will, and that Ziard’s killer -- and that killer’s accomplices and followers -- would live out their days in peace, unhindered by just desserts.

Now, he _finally_ has a chance to put those gloomy thoughts to bed, and he’s not so finicky that he won’t take it, even if he has to do it a little less stylishly than he’d hoped when Viren first appeared at his mirror, Avizandum’s proverbial blood still fresh on his hands.

When he emerges onto the unassuming white plane of the caprock, he looks up to the sky to check the time. There’s maybe an hour or so left of the kind of darkness he needs, before the stars begin to wink out and make way for the dawn.

At the center of the Ash-Knife, he lies on his back. Winter’s Turn Eve, full dark, new moon, not a cloud in the sky: if he can _possibly_ make contact the old fashioned way in this stupid meat-sack body, _this_ would be the moment it’d be possible. Under these conditions, the stars might as well be on the ground all around him, they’re so close, so loud.

Or they would be, if he could _hear._

It may be impossible to rekindle anything close to his full power without access to the _rest_ of himself (well, that, or he could wait about as long as it’d take to pour the ocean through a funnel to pass through into this body, but who has that kind of time?) But this? Here? Now? A few tiny droplets of his true self have come through in the year and a half he’s been stuck this way and under these conditions, that could be all he needs to take back the _one_ arcanum that is rightfully and truly his.

The trouble is, he’s never been what one might call a _good_ Startouch to begin with, even as he’s spent most of his life as the _only_ Startouch. That latter is what he depends on now. 

_I may hold grudges and dig my heels in the soil and intertwine myself with the fates of the most ephemeral of creatures, but I am_ your _fault, and whether this is your grand design or your greatest mistake..._

_I’m all that’s left._

He feels it at last: a tiny-but-significant rip, a slender awl driven through a pinhole. A little more of him can flow through, and he snaps out of place, out of time. His next breath could take seconds or decades, a moment of communion that once left him impatient and aggravated as he waited for it to end so he could get _on_ with his business but now _thrills_ him, it means he can--

_What?_

Aaravos scrabbles to his astral feet, leaving his incomplete body lying unblinking in the pale dust. He pushes off the ground as though it will improve his vantage point to hover in midair, and he cranes his ghostly neck to look to the west again, now for an entirely different reason than before. 

He’s… _not_ all that’s left.

Confusion rattles him.

Spectrally, he plants himself against the nexus, his anchor, his fuel. Aaravos reaches blindly across the miles toward the other phantom thing, and with the trace of a rune, grasps, and _drags._

* * *

“We really have to find a better place to meet,” Rayla mutters, pulling her hand away from something slimy on the curved underside of the bridge. She glances sidelong at the flowing water, and then away, at its starlit reflection on the stones above. “Really, _anywhere_ else. This is ridiculous.”

“Sorry, I just... it was so close, last time." If he were really here he’d probably be pretty uncomfortable too, but it’s not as if anything can stick to his astral form. 

“Better safe than sorry. Same thing Ethari keeps sayin’. You do _glow_ a little, when I can see you at all.”

“Is he still--”

Rayla lets out a sigh that lifts the wispy hairs around her forehead. “He still thinks there’s good in Runaan, but he hasn’t _seen_ Runaan, and…”

She shrugs. Somehow Callum didn’t notice until now that the kohl she’s been using around her eyes is smudged. Maybe a change of subject? 

“I uh… missed you, on the full moon.” Helplessly, automatically, he puts out his hand, and she passes hers through it with such clear frustrated wistfulness it hurts to see.

“You know I would have come if I could.” Rayla doesn’t meet his eyes. “There was another raid, on--”

“I know,” Callum says, and then, at her surprise: “I only overheard the day before, at Ezran’s festival speech. I’d have told you if I could. I wanted to.”

“Came for us tonight, too.”

“On Winter’s-turn eve?!” Callum half-squeaks. He looks at her with renewed concern, wishing more than anything he could touch her face, examine her for some kind of damage, physical or not.

“I think they timed it for the new moon ‘cause of how it went _last_ time.” Even that brief twitch of a smirk is a relief to see. She looks down at her hand, making a fist and opening it as if testing something. “Full moon was a mistake for them, even the other Moonshadows didn't see me coming. Guess I’m almost as good at bein’ a ghost now as you are, in my own way. I just don’t know how they’re _findin’_ us.”

Seriously, he asks, “But everyone’s okay?”

Rayla smiles and her hand twitches, as if she already forgot for a moment that they can’t touch. “We were ready. Don’t think we’ll even have to move this time. ‘Course, I can’t--” 

“Right. No details.” Callum cuts her off with a terse nod. 

The flow of information goes one way, as much as they can manage. Callum hates not knowing, but Rayla’s constant refrain is right. It’s worth it to avoid _exactly_ the kind of suspicion that would hover around him now, if she’d been more forthcoming. (Not to mention the fear of what could happen if anyone in the castle happened to decide he might _know_ something. Keeping the second arcanum a secret is bad enough.)

Almost in unison, both of them sigh, and recognizing it, laugh. Even a heavy, tired laugh is better than no laugh at all.

“I don’t know if this is any help,” Callum says, “but tomorrow there’s a huge trip to Pentarchy Aequum. They’re _all_ going, everyone, they’re taking me and everything. Castle’ll be half-empty for three days, at least. Aanya and her advisors, too.”

Callum’s not sure what’s worse: being left alone in his room most of the time, or this _new_ status quo that started when his absence became _conspicuous._ Now, on top of his _lessons,_ he’s constantly dragged out to sit and wave and smile in the background of sporting events, fancy dinners, and speeches, to prove he’s _safe_ and _compliant_ and _making progress._

On one hand, he gets to see Ez.

On the other, Corvus goes over the _rules_ with him _every time_ before they so much as cross the threshold of his bedroom-slash-cell -- the forbidden things he must not discuss (a lecture he imagines Ezran must be getting as well) and the patient, caring reasons that the two of them can’t ever be left _alone._

He’d doesn’t think he could have handled it before this second arcanum, not without doing something stupid. The impulse is still there but Callum sees clearer than ever that some things are worth suffering the long game, like these moments when he’s free of his body and, in some ways, feels more like himself than when he’s inside it.

“When you say _all--”_ Rayla considers.

Callum nods and rubs the back of his astral neck. “It was a tradition, before. Used to be we’d do that and then the Banther lodge, or the other way around depending on the weather. Every winter, all the Pentarchy royals, their councils, everyone’s families, they’d all have a big unity celebration at the Aequum. This year… I guess it’s just Katolis and Duren.”

Rayla frowns. “And the dragons?”

“They’ll be there. Not… in the complex, I don't think they’d fit, but I’m pretty sure Scyntyllah and Fosso at least are coming. Can you _use_ any of this on notice this short? I wanted to tell you before.”

The flush of the cold brings some of the life back to Rayla’s face. “It certainly _sounds_ like something we could--Callum? Are you--Callum!”

His name drops off at the end, fading into a deep distance, the last thing he hears before the world turns to nothing but wind and streaks of light.


	22. Book Six: Ocean | Chapter Two: Specific Gravity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.”_   
>  **― William James**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took a bit 'cause Supernatural really emotionally suplexed me with that finale, but I'm back on task with this fic now! :-)

**Book Six: Ocean**

**Chapter 2: Specific Gravity**

Callum stops existing. At least, it feels that way, for a moment. It isn’t going to sleep, or even fainting, it’s cold and wind and _heat_ and breaking apart into an infinity of pieces spread farther than his body could ever hope to stretch. It’s a kind of _nothing_ that really deserves another word, or maybe he just never truly understood the word until now.

It isn’t dark, not exactly. Everything is black except for the tiny places where it isn’t. (Not tiny, his mind reminds him, just far, impossibly far.) There are more of them than he could count in a million years of counting. He cannot comprehend but can perfectly _feel_ the distance between himself and each one, caught in a web, impaled on a taut thread that stretches in straight lines from one pinprick of light to another, the thread itself a part of him.

And then he is back, still in the dark, but surrounded by ordinary things: stone and sand, the stars above him (above as they ought to be, rather than around, although maybe they’re that too, in a more abstract manner of speaking.) His feet don’t touch the ground, something holding him up, tight around his spectral throat.

It takes him a second to realize it is a broad, powerful hand just as ghostly as his own. 

Briefly he struggles, before realizing this is like being underwater in a dream: he can still breathe. This is not an attack, but a gesture of _control,_ by--

By an elf, or an astral projection of one, but if an _elf_ is astral projecting--

“You’re _Startouch,”_ Callum concludes out loud. He tries to relax into the grip, to stop struggling, something in him wants to make a calm impression and there’s clearly little he can do until the elf puts him down.

“And _you’re…”_ The elf tilts his head, his voice so resonant it takes the edge off the confused irritation in his tone. “Human.”

“Um, yep?” What can he do but smile?

“You’re a _child.”_ The elf frowns at him, confusion alien on his face. “Still, you’re--hmm. What is your name?”

Callum hesitates. Just handing over his name seems irresponsible, at the least. As a first resort, he tries to _wake up,_ to pull back to his body, but to no avail. The grasp on him may not be actively hurting him, but he can’t break free, no matter how effortless the elf makes it look. 

He can _feel,_ using some sense he maybe didn’t used to have before he did magic, how acutely out of his depth he is. 

“I don’t want to be _rude,”_ Callum says, trying his best to sound upbeat and friendly rather than panicked, but struggling not to hurry and stumble on his words, “but I’m sure you can understand why I might not want to--I mean, you could be anybody, and you just dragged me across, like, time and space, or something, surely you can see how that might be a little… intimidating? Again, not trying to be rude, but if you want to tell me _your_ name, we could start there?”

Tension drains from the elf’s face, and his mouth, already large, stretches into a too-wide smile, a chuckle slithering from behind his teeth. Somehow, Callum senses he’s made him _more_ comfortable, not less, he’s not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing. 

“Very well. Perhaps that _is_ for the best.”

“Great! So, uh--”

“Aaravos.” He uses his free hand to touch his chest with a flourish, a streak of skin with a star-shaped marking visible between the sides of his cloak once one is brushed aside. He’s in his element now, speaking slowly, taking up space. “Pleased, _I think,_ to make the acquaintance of the _only_ other sapient being on this continent with the Star Arcanum… _however_ it is you acquired it. We’ll get to that.”

There’s something to that, something unsettling. Even if it’s true, if it’s just this guy and Callum, what is he _implying?_ Callum focuses so hard on the second half of that introduction he nearly loses the thread of the first half. 

“Aaravos,” Callum repeats, the name fully out of his mouth before point A and point B finally connect with a firework in his head. He keeps thinking out loud, filling the silence. “Wait. I know that name. That’s the--”

“The what?” His face is impassive, but his ears twitch back in a gesture Callum’s seen on Rayla a hundred times.

Callum charges ahead anyway, expecting more that this elf was _named after_ the connection than anything. “Aaravos, as in _arch-mage?”_

“The _very_ same, how interesting that you’ve--”

“As in, _Key of Aaravos.”_ Callum doesn’t mean to interrupt, he’s just excited to have made the whole connection.

The last thing he sees of the desert is the Aaravos’ ears dipping all the way backward, and the twin lines of his eyebrows flying up toward his hairline. He lets go abruptly, yanking his arm back as if Callum had bitten him.

The _next_ thing Callum sees is cloth and stone, and he is again heavy in his body.

 _Aaravos._ That wasn’t a namesake, was it? He really met the _arch-mage Aaravos._ When his father’s letter described an arch-mage and his relic, Callum had imagined someone long dead, an artifact of history books. 

This could be the answer! _This_ could be the break he’s been waiting for! A real-live arch-mage, a master of all the primal sources, someone who’s been in Callum’s shoes, gaining arcana he weren’t born with--although, now that Callum thinks about it, his father never explained _how_ that “key” came into the possession of Katolis’ royal family. 

When he’d thought the mage was dead, it made sense that the kingdom would keep something with potential use that no longer _belonged_ to anyone. 

Is it stolen? Was it a… a gift, somehow? Will he want it back? There’s no brushing off how alarmed he was. Would he be willing to explain, if they spoke again?

Callum has so many questions.

He’s in the midst of agonizing over not introducing himself properly when there’s a knock, easily identifiable as Corvus’. Callum knows _everyone’s_ knuckles now.

“Prince Callum? May I?” Corvus asks from the other side of the door. 

It’s a charade. Callum can’t say no, Corvus is just too polite to say so. He pushes down his irritation when he calls back, “Yep!”

Corvus’ usual exhausted, apologetic face appears through the crack in the door before the rest of him, but Callum can’t concentrate on anything he’s saying. While Corvus moves his mouth about the trip and the Aequum and the itinerary and the rules, Callum is too busy trying to think about how he can get word to Rayla that he’s alright, and, possibly louder in his mind now: finding (or… re-finding) the Arch-Mage Aaravos.

If it feels like he’s being watched, that’s probably just perfectly ordinary anxiety.

* * *

However cold it gets, there is no snow on the Storm Spire. 

That’s not in the same way as _there’s no crying in basic training_ or _there’s no emberback infestation in the Breach barracks._ This is actually true.

Far below the peak where Amaya sits wrapped in an itchy army blanket, flat formations of blurry-edged cloud banks churn like a white-gray ocean. They’ve been threatening snow all day, but if they actually released it, the only way she’d _know_ would be to see white on the lower ledges once they moved on.

One of the best things, she thought, about finally getting to leave the godforsaken crapscape at the border was supposed to be enjoying _weather_ again, seasons, the woods and hills. Then of course there was the _food,_ Katolis having neatly swiped the best of all four other kingdoms in its cuisine, and the bed so soft she doesn’t remember how to sleep in it. And the company--

Well, she’s not _bereft_ there, at least. The environment may be rocks, rocks, and more rocks, with a side of endless clear cold, and the food may be hardtack, reconstituted porridge, pickles, and whatever her dragon hosts feel like sharing (of varying levels of human edibility) and sure, she’s right back to sleeping on a 2-inch thick bedroll, but the company?

Janai comes up the stairs at just the right moment, balancing two stone cups of something steaming, her face a blend of curiosity and concern. The marks on her face have faded -- never having believed they’d be here so long, she didn’t bring the stain to reapply them. No longer gold but a translucent shade or two lighter than she is, they look in passing like ancient scars long healed.

The company is good. 

For a moment, Amaya thinks this will be a moment alone, but Janai is quickly followed by Kazi, Gren, and Zym -- the last of whom struggles with the steps, having reached roughly the size of a draft horse. He’d be flying, if this weren’t some kind of cheer-up-Amaya parade. 

“What’s the occasion?” Amaya’s hands move lazily.

Janai lowers herself smoothly to the ground without spilling a drop of what smells like spiked cocoa.

“...And _where_ did you get _chocolate?!”_ Amaya adds with renewed energy.

“It wasn’t easy,” Janai elides the details, passing Amaya a cup. “I think I owe Ibis quite a large favor.”

“Was I that obvious?” Amaya sets the cup down on the stone to ask, as she replays the last couple weeks in her mind for evidence of her own grumpiness.

“I’m afraid so,” Kazi replies, their hands and mouth both moving together. 

“If anything, you should be the one we’re here for,” Amaya points out to Gren. “You’re the one with the birthday coming up.”

“Don’t worry,” he reassures with a wink. “We didn’t get into debt with Ibis just to not have enough chocolate for that too. Besides, I wish we could be home for Winter’s Turn, too.”

“And…” Janai rests a hand on Amaya’s knee to bring her attention around. “There is _one_ more surprise. Someone _else_ wanted to cheer you up too, as a kind of… thanks for being here.”

She nods to Zym, who gets up from where he’s been rolling around on the stone scratching his back. He points his face to the starry sky and she supposes he must be making some kind of sound.

It’s like a strange up-close sunrise (with a deep blue-and-gray sun) when Zubeia rises up above the edge of the spire. She takes up Amaya’s entire field of view, and the mountain shakes with the force of her takeoff from below. 

Zym follows her up into the sky. 

At first, it isn’t clear what she’s doing. Amaya raises her hands as if to say something, to ask, but her fingers don’t quite form words, awed as she is. Her circles around the spire from above are deliberate, rhythmic, sending plumes of wind down that make Amaya drink her chocolate in a hurry so it doesn’t splash all over her. 

Lower and more erratic is Zym, though his flight really has grown strong, between the training from his mother and Pyrrah, and his small size makes him more agile than Zubeia could hope to be without entering her lightning form. They glow and flicker in turn, white-blue light tinged with prisms of rainbow, like tremendous fireflies chatting to one another.

Watching them, her large loops and his smaller ones, Amaya hardly realizes what the _clouds_ are doing.

Some of the clouds below rise up, the wisps above collect and sink, until Zym and Zubeia have made a bank full of damp air just above the peak of the spire.

Zubeia shocks rainbow-colored lightning around and through, magic suffusing the cloud, and:

It snows.

First little fluttering specks, and then, as if Zubeia can _adjust_ the storm, big, fluffy airy flakes that drift down to stick on the winter-chilled stone. 

Zym deftly manages the wind, keeps it from being anywhere near dangerous, and patrols the edges.

It isn’t long before a layer of powder gathers on the mountaintop. Amaya waits until Janai isn’t paying attention -- she’s turned away, the way Gren’s nodding it seems like they’re talking. 

For a second, as she bends to scoop up a handful of snow, Gren actually glances at her over Janai’s shoulder. He conceals his recognition like the loyal soldier he is, and Janai doesn’t catch it.

That means there is nothing between Amaya and beaning Janai right in the back of the head with a soft snowball.

Despite being from a place with no snow, Janai catches on fast, and Kazi isn’t too far behind.

It’s humans versus elves, until Kazi bats a snowball out of the air right before it hits Gren, and in surprise, he accidentally kicks one of their cups down the steps. Kazi lobs a snowball back at Janai with a grin and suddenly Gren’s allied with Kazi, shifting the fight entirely. 

In turn, Amaya joins forces with Janai, who distracts him while Amaya sneaks up behind him and stuffs a handful of snow down the back of his jacket. 

Zubeia’s laughter vibrates the top of the spire. Amaya’s stops to make sure _that’s_ what that feeling in her feet is (she’s starting to get accustomed to dragon facial expressions) and Gren gets her with a tight-packed snowball just above the waistband, snow melting against her skin. His smile crinkles his eyes for the first time in months. 

He’ll pay for that.

Indeed, if nothing else, the company is _excellent._

* * *

The way to the Aequum is long. Callum doesn’t remember it being anywhere near _this_ long or _this_ bumpy, but the road was torn up pretty badly by the migrations, still yet to be repaired. With more than a little resentment, he wonders if maybe that’s simply not where Katolis’ focus is, at the moment.

When they set out in the wee hours of the morning, they gave him a choice to ride in the open carriage or the closed one. Despite the cold, he picked the former to enjoy some views that weren’t the same patch of sky and the same distant town from his bedroom window. He didn’t realize it would separate him from Ez for the journey. Did they mean to do that? Was he baited? Or were they not even really thinking about it? Is it his fault for not asking questions? 

Not knowing haunts him, leaves him wondering still who he can trust. 

He misses Soren. 

Debris litters the path, the coachman nimbly guiding the horses around it. Sometime last year, Callum heard that Soren had gone off somewhere (and apparently he was _very_ late finding out) but a part of him didn’t truly believe it until he started getting dragged out for events like this and Soren just _wasn’t there._

It was like waking up one morning with the sun rising in the wrong place. They weren’t always close exactly, Soren’s willingness to spend time with a kid a couple years younger and Callum’s tolerance of his teasing both swinging wildly as they grew up, but this is the first time in his life that Soren’s family isn’t _there,_ entangled with Callum’s own. 

Some of his oldest, haziest memories are of them, even before Lord Viren introduced mom to King Harrow. He recalls a dining table in a firelit room, his parents -- mom, and his first dad -- talking with Lord Viren and Lady Sigrin about things incomprehensible and dull, while he and Soren and Claudia made faces at one another across the table and waited to be excused.

It wouldn’t be so bad if Soren weren’t the last of them. Dad died, Lady Sigrin left, mom died, Lord Viren and Claudia…

Well. 

Now Soren’s gone too, and no one will tell him where, or talk about it with him. It’s like the last pillar of Callum’s childhood has crumbled, something he didn’t even know was load-bearing, and it unmoors him from his own reality.

He wanted to talk to Ezran about it (Soren not being on the list of _forbidden_ topics.)

On the bright side, at least when the afternoon brings the approach to the Aequum, he’s not trapped in a dark carriage -- he can watch the light change as the sun moves overhead, and see the Arch of the Pentarchy rise up at the horizon and grow nearer, bit by bit, framing Pentarchy Hill behind as it has every year. The trees form an honor guard to watch over them as they approach.

The search isn’t unusual. Security guards have always examined the horses, carriages, and luggage as they proceed toward the Aequum.

It’s just, there’s never been _elves_ among their ranks in the past. For every human, there is a Sunfire elf, clad conspicuously in their own colors, with only incidental accessories that bear the Pentarchy’s five-column emblem.

Past the arch, Callum can more clearly get a look at the dragons flanking the hill -- Scyntyllah perches on the steepest side, curled up like a giant ginger cat, her tail wrapping around nearly to the bend of the path. They’ll pass just beside it when they reach her, so close he might reach out and brush the frilled flare at the tip. Of Fosso he can only see the spines of his back, peeking past the edge of the land, as if the slope itself has grown great projections of quartz or fluorite.

Smaller dragons dot the land around them, at least five or six that Callum can spot from here. One, so young it’s no bigger than a banther, sits atop the stone arch itself, pivoting after they’ve gone by to further regard them through slitted diamond eyes. He can pick out Sun and Earth dragons, but also a few that could be Sky or Moon, pale-colored and hard to discern for sure at this distance. It’s probably a mix of the two.

At any given time one or two make circles around the main building at the peak of the hill, but they trade off frequently.

This, too, is an important reminder, one that doesn’t feel like an accident. 

From halfway up the hill, Callum can turn back and see Aanya’s contingent not far behind them, her carriage unmistakable in the lavish intricacy of its dome-shaped roof. 

His room in the Annex feels lonely without Ezran (presumably in the part of the suite their parents used to stay in) -- or at least, it does at first. 

“Prince Callum!” Opeli takes him by surprise. He left his door open, for no other reason than that no one’s made him close it yet and he’d like to enjoy _that_ for as long as it lasts. 

The warm notes of a skilled pianist filter up the steps from the entry-way where they were received. He feels more out of place now than the first Winter’s Turn that he was royalty, tiny and intimidated by every little trapping. Now he isn’t so much frightened as he is vaguely disgusted by it all in its current context.

“Minister Opeli,” Callum addresses cautiously, and he sees her face fall just a little at the tense use of her title, the way his back straightens as it would for a teacher.

Neither of them imagined it would be this way, but it’s strange to see her like this, as if he’s behind some wall he hasn’t seen past since the day he was brought in for his trial. If he isn’t much mistaken, she looks like she feels more nervous than he does.

“Callum, I’d like to introduce you to someone, if that’s alright.”

“Of course, ma’am.” It’s the most passive-aggressive ma’am of his life, with a record unlikely to be beaten any time soon. She can tell, but there’s nothing she can do about it, and Callum hates that he enjoys that. 

She presses on nobly. “We… we wanted Corvus to be able to enjoy the festivities, you see, and everyone at the castle has already been working so hard. Beyond that, I truly _am_ pleased with your progress, as Nafai reports it, and I wanted you to have as nice a time as I can provide, under the circumstances.”

Callum fixes her with a look that says, _alright, drop the other shoe,_ as politely as possible. 

“Your security detail,” Opeli explains. “Minister Runaan suggested he could find a trainee, someone close to your age, so you would have someone to talk to, so it wouldn’t feel quite so much like… well.”

_Like I’m the threat being guarded against, instead of an asset being guarded, even though we all know the truth._

Callum knows. 

“Her name is Edile.” She beckons to someone outside the room. “If things go well, we’re thinking about whether we might bring her on in Katolis as well. It’s a popular posting for Moonshadow elves, close as it is to the nexus, and--”

When _Edile_ rounds the corner, for a brief second, he doesn’t hear anything Opeli says, something about a _good influence on Callum_. The name erases itself from Callum’s mind because his brain wistfully makes him think--

But no. 

She isn’t Rayla. 

They could be related, it’s uncanny how they share the same lithe frame and jawline, the same slightly-wild hair. Yet, while they both carry themselves like they’re smirking with their whole body, Edile lacks the undercurrent of tired reticence Rayla’s developed in the last year or so. She’s probably had it easy, so far.

She’s different in the eyes, too -- narrow and smiling, a blue-green that matches the colors of her uniform as opposed to Rayla’s lavender.

“Nice to meet you,” says Edile, her accent putting a musical lilt on her words. “Sorry about the invasion of privacy, but they’ve asked me to follow you ‘round while you’re visiting.”

“No, no,” Callum says with a laugh. He’s made allies of enemies before, and if he could make one of Edile, who knows what sneaky freedoms he might establish. “If anything, I should be sorry _you_ got such a boring posting.”

“Frankly, this bein’ my _first_ job on my own… boring doesn’t sound bad at all.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” Opeli says, adding before she slips away down the hall: “I’ll see you both in the main building as soon as you’re ready to join us.”

Leaving, she looks almost… guilty?

“So,” Edile glances straight into his eyes, and then away. “Guess we have to get the ground rules out’a the way--”

Callum ticks off on his fingers: “No being alone with Ez, hugs only where you can see us, no gifts that haven’t been pre-screened, no talking about dark magic, mages, or politics of any kind.”

“You really _do_ want to make my job easy, then?”

“Seems only polite,” Callum says, struggling a little to remember the formal way he’s supposed to tie the special knot of the cloak.

“So you really do Primal magic? Even bein’ a human? Here, let me help you--” She steps deep into his personal space to fiddle with the leather strap-and-chain contraption, and he can smell the outside on her, all winter air and wood smoke. 

It’s hard to remember what Rayla smelled like the last time she came to his window, it’s been so long since they were genuinely, physically in the same place, and even when they are there’s those stupid _bars_ in the way.

Edile steps back. “There y’are.”

“Whoa,” Callum regards the tie in the mirror. It’s almost impossibly neat, the complex knot sitting perfectly horizontal, every segment in the right place. “No one’s going to believe I did this.”

“Don’t worry,” she says with an affable wink as they leave for the Annex, “Make you a deal. I’ll back you up about the knot no matter what anybody says, if _you_ introduce me to everyone and give me the gossip about them later.”

He _shouldn’t know_ half as much _gossip_ as astral projection has let him pick up, but there’s no way she realizes that, right? He can use this to get her on his side. Between that and the light in her eyes when she asks, it’s an offer he can’t refuse.

* * *

The three unoccupied Thrones of Unity flank the room behind elaborate screens meant to section them off from the party space. Aanya can hardly blame them, despite how it makes the seats seem to _lurk_. Hard to decide what’s worse though, the sense of being watched from the shadows, or how it would look if they were more visible in their stillness. 

_Your fault,_ murmurs a voice that’s been getting louder in her mind the longer she’s spent in near-total isolation. Creating a smaller zone for the event also makes a certain kind of sense, to make it less obvious how few people are milling around.

Her head hurts.

As far as Aanya is concerned, it doesn’t really help. Ezran’s family is welcoming as always, and Prince Callum’s new… attaché, or whatever she is, is immediately charming (so much so that she actually puts Aanya _on edge_ a bit, trained as she is to be cautious around anyone she finds just a bit too solicitous.) 

She’s glad that one of her aides thought to have her furs cleaned and tailored, because it is cold and oppressive. Even the musicians seem to feel it, the strings playing something slow and plodding, the percussion near-silent. She’s genuinely _trying_ to enjoy this, but she isn’t sure she’s stubborn enough to get past the feeling of being a ghost haunting the Aequum (complete with dirge) more than anything else. 

Making the rounds takes a depressingly short time, and when she’s done, she’s already forgotten everything that was said to her. Ezran completes his own circuit, spending extra time with his brother (she can feel the wistful tension from across the room) and they wind up both in the doorway, looking out at the distant woods and roads visible for miles from this high vantage. 

Ezran’s two Earthblood companions are in an alcove, having what looks to be a strangely intense conversation, maybe even an argument? It’s strange to see him without them, his constant visual background noise. It’s safe enough here, no reason he shouldn’t get to break away a little. At least, that seems to be _her_ guards’ opinion. Although, to be fair, Aanya is better with a dagger than she suspects Ezran to be. 

Maybe one day they can spar and find out. She thinks she’d like that. No one’s put a bow in her hands in… well… 

Since Kasef. 

“Is that water, or wine?” Ezran asks. 

“Wine.” She doesn’t mean to be chilly, it just comes out. Fortunately it doesn’t seem to faze him in the least. 

“Oh, so they’ll give _you_ wine?” 

Aanya startles herself with her own laugh, the first genuine one she’s had since she got here. “Since my birthday.”

“Is it good? I tried Callum’s once but--” He makes a face. “That was red wine, though. Never had your kind.”

No surprise there. She’s seen the export tables, Katolis hardly buys _any_ white. There was a whole meeting with the vintner’s guild about how they might drum up foreign interest in the future, the grape yield _overwhelming_ with Fosso’s influence on the soil. She was _this_ close to telling them to dump it in the river for all she cares, how is _this_ what’s on their minds right now? (Instead, she promises to write a letter to the tastemaking head sommelier at Katolis Castle and see if she could convince him to feature a few, and--ugh.)

At least they’re adaptable. Seems a theme in her kingdom. She never should have worried about whether they’d get used to having a dragon rule them, apparently they’re fine.

“I like it.” She likes it because it is a foot on the throat of her new and irritating inner companion, and because the white doesn’t aggravate her ever-present headache like red does. 

It is the taste she has come to associate with being able to simply say _yes_ to whatever Fosso and his servants demand of her without thinking hard enough to choke on the word. 

There’s no polite way to ask Ezran if he also feels like a bird beating its wings fruitlessly against a golden cage, so she says, “I’m sure if I summoned someone they’d give you a glass. It’s not as if anyone’s going to say no to either of us.”

He glances at the server, and then back at Aanya. “Maybe later.”

“Weather’s been good,” she says. “In Duren, I mean. Harvest went on until… what, two weeks ago?”

“That’s good. With all the refugees...” He trails off.

“We’ll need it.” She nods at the birds outside. “Actually, I had hoped to pick your brain about logistics, I’ve heard Katolis is doing a wonderful job with storage and transportation of the surplus, I’m sure the cold helps, but… you know we might even benefit from a summit for… Ezran?”

He’s gone very quiet, his feet apparently fascinating. 

“I’m sorry I’m kind of stupid,” Ezran finally says out of the corner of his mouth, voice cracking a little, maybe the start of it changing. His words pick up speed and volume as he lets himself say them aloud, obviously long-suppressed. “I spend all my time in lessons and I still don’t feel like I understand _anything._ Everyone says it’s okay because I’m young, but you’re hardly any older than me, and look at _you._ You know _so much.”_

“What? I didn’t mean to… I apologize. I forgot my manners.” Duren has precisely one friend these days, and the last thing she needs is for him to think she was _showing off._ The wine deepens her sigh and loosens her tongue. “It’s a party, I shouldn’t be boring you with this. I just don’t get to talk to anyone about _real_ things these days. ‘ _Aanya, what does your choice of seasonal tapestry in the second dining room_ _mean for the direction of the nation?’_ I don’t know, I just like it! When I dismissed my regent, it was because he wouldn’t let me in on what’s _real._ I had a vision, I wanted to _help_ people, and it was the only way to get anyone to take me seriously for a single second. Now, I just feel so--”

She balls up a fist and releases it. 

“Stuck?” Ezran offers. 

She huffs a laugh through her nose, pleased to find her encouraging smile is actually genuine after all. “For all that, you understand _me_ well enough, and this is the first time we’ve talked in months.” 

“I don’t have a… a vision, or whatever, but somehow it always just…” He gestures with his hands parallel, like he’s holding something only he can see. “In the moment, someone tells me something, and they make it sound good. And then no one updates me unless I get upset! And sometimes it turns out things got worse! My dad used to let people into the castle to tell him what they thought directly, so he wouldn’t have to deal with this.”

“That was smart of him -- and brave.”

“So why won’t they let _me_ do it? I mean, if it wasn’t too dangerous for my dad, why is it too dangerous for me?”

Aanya looks down at the reflection of her crown in her glass. “It’s strange, don’t you think?”

“Huh?”

“Just… it should be _safer_ now, with the dragons and the elves helping remove the… seedier elements. I always thought dark mages were rare. When they said they were going to remove them, send them somewhere and teach them another way, I thought it’d be over in a month. Here we are, and it _still_ seems like every rock they turn over has at least a mage or a sympathizer, or something, underneath.”

Ezran frowns. “You mean there are more than before?”

“Maybe? Maybe Neolandia and Del Bar had a lot more than we knew. I know King Ahling encouraged the practice, and there was that little school in Del Bar.” She’s thinking out loud again. “Still, even accounting for that… I just wonder. If they were always there, why are they suddenly so dangerous _now?”_

Aanya watches Ezran’s head turn. The topic has naturally shifted his attention to Callum. By the musician’s stand, the prince ends a conversation with a severe-looking woman Aanya believes to be a cousin of Sarai’s, after which he whispers something in the elf guard’s ear that makes her snicker in response. 

“He seems to be doing well,” Aanya says in an effort to be optimistic. “I was worried about him, when I heard.”

“Thank you for your concern,” Ezran recites, an etiquette lesson given breath. More honestly, he adds, “I hope he is.”

“You... don’t know?”

It’s Ezran’s turn to sigh. “I’m allowed to talk to him a _little_ now, when we’re together for events, but… I’m not supposed to ask about _that_ . If I even get close, Ylai gives me this _look_ like…” He shivers. “They say Nafai -- that’s our teacher -- he’ll let me know when he’s finished _the process._ Same thing they’re doing at the border, just... one-on-one? I guess if he’s improving, it means _something_ good. Do you think anyone will come back from the school at the border soon?”

“The…” Aanya swallows. She can tell he’s talking in a circle around something he doesn’t want to say, but there’s no elegant way to pry. “The school. Right. I don’t know.”

It’s the truth -- no one will tell her much about it either, though she’s begun to ask herself why in a way she hadn’t really thought to before. She opens her mouth again to see if she can find out what Ezran’s been told, when a high-pitched shriek cuts the air, followed by the sound of glass shattering.

As if in practiced sync, the partygoers whip around to the source of the disturbance: Callum, limply unconscious on the floor.

* * *

“Let me go!” 

Aaravos grasps the strange human child (whose name he has now discerned) by the shoulder this time, but with Star magic at last on his side again, it’s no easier for his subject to wrest free, no matter how much he pulls and wriggles. Even with all this distance from his physical form _severely_ muting Aaravos’ power, it is still no contest.

“So,” Aaravos says, “Prince Callum, of Katolis. Not a descendant of my champion, not directly, but still in possession of the key. The royal line’s become awfully _slipshod,_ hasn’t it? 

“You don’t understand,” says the boy, glancing back at his own body, surrounded by other concerned humans. “I have to go back. Someone will see me, see us, all astral like this. I can’t control it well--”

“ _I_ can,” Aaravos says, half an assurance, half a threat. “No one will see you unless I want them to. You… don’t _want_ them to see you.”

It’s funny, the look on the child’s face, almost _amused_ in defeat. “I’m usually a little better at strategy than this.”

“You… _hide_ this Arcanum. I can imagine a few reasons. What is _yours?”_ It’s strange, how he can only do this _one_ thing, and not very well, as if the Stars’ allowance of his connection is tentative at best.

“Okay. Archmage Aaravos,” Callum says, alongside a deep, steadying breath. Aaravos’ face twitches with amusement at the title, “Let me start over. I never meant to disrespect you. The only thing I know about the cube is that your name is on it and that you’re connected with all six sources. It was one line in a letter from the king, he wrote it right before he died. He knew I was interested in magic, and I don’t think he thought my brother was ready. If I answer your questions, will you answer mine? And… will you let me go?”

It is swiftly becoming clear that the child imagined something entirely different from whatever little information he was given. Good. It might teach him something about taking things for granted, or making too many assumptions.

“Perhaps.” Aaravos snaps his fingers, and they pop across the space so they’re near _his_ body instead of the boy’s, back in the desert, where his power is greatest. “If I let you go, and you return before I dismiss you, everyone will know the secrets you’ve concealed. Is that understood?”

“I understand.” The poor child sounds so _serious._

“If I’m truly _satisfied_ with our conversation, however…” Aaravos says, releasing his grip from Callum’s shoulder, prepared to offer the _carrot._ “Perhaps I can help you make slightly better _use_ of the Arcanum you’ve somehow acquired.”

He brightens tentatively, a thirst to learn struggling to the surface of his expression, impossible for him to entirely suppress. 

In the past, he’s known elves who used fear or friendship or sex to try to control humans’ behavior. Aaravos knows them better. Few things seem to motivate them _quite_ like curiosity. 

It’s about half an hour, all in all, before he releases the boy with a spell that will let them keep in touch. From there, he can take his sweet time deciding how much else he’s worth teaching. Aaravos will have a lot less freedom and a narrower flow of power once he leaves the nexus, but with that spell in place, it should still be possible to detect him.

Shortly before dawn, he spots an ambler in the distance, and flitting about its steady head, a feathered Skywing, who responds with intrigue to a loud whistle-call (Skywings being famously _nearly_ as curious as humans.) 

“I have a long journey ahead, across the desert and through the Far Reaches. You and your _friend_ over there could reduce it to days,” begins his proposal.

“Could we?” She leans heavily on a long staff with a crescent at the top, one leg crossed over the other, looking at him with an odd combination of greed and flirtation. “And what would be in it for us, pray tell? We _are_ pretty busy.”

“You seem the type to be up to date on things,” Aaravos offers.

“Flattery _will_ get you everywhere.” Her smile is distinctly impish.

“In that case, you must have heard of Kannati, and it’s recent _awakening?_ ”

“And what if I have?”

“If you help me, you need only tell them that their _Startouch friend_ owes you a favor, and you will never pay for a meal or a drink or a bed. And if you don’t mind keeping our trip quiet _outside_ Kannati--” He produces a small-but-valuable gem found only in Kannati, both a bonus for her silence and proof of his offer.

She thinks about this for a moment, and ultimately decides she’s not too busy at all. 

* * *

When it’s over, Callum startles back into his body, sweating and coughing as though he wasn’t breathing right before. A blanket covers him, wooly on his bare legs. Why are they bare? Wherever he is, the room is lit only by a single candle. He’s draped on a divan in -- he recognizes by smell the private parlor where his dad and some of the men would retreat with their pipes near the ends of parties past. If he concentrates, he can hear the voices and music of the party on the other side of a wall.

“Callum? You awake?” 

His half-conscious mouth very nearly forms an R before self-correcting. “Edile?”

 _“Thank the spirits._ You’re still all peely-wally. Then again, you were before, too.” It takes a moment to realize she’s perched in a chair near the door. Didn’t he look that way already? Why didn’t he notice her the first time? “Kinda let me down there, Prince Callum, you promised me _borin’_ and there you went, givin’ me a scare and trouble wi’ Minister Runaan all at once.”

“Sorry about that. Hey, uh… Did I… do anything... weird?” He needs to know if anyone saw any evidence of magic, without giving it all away.

“Weird? You mean like hit the floor mid-sentence, spill wine all over yourself, and twitch about like a fish on a hook?”

That explains the clothes. “But that’s all?”

“All part o’ the routine for you is it?”

“No, I just…” Actually, yes, pretty much, minus the twitching and the drink spilling, and usually he’s already in a safe position when he does it, but it’s not as if he’s about to tell _her_ all that. Instead, he seizes on a lie embarrassing enough not to be questioned. “I just uh… my pants are gone. I wanted to make sure I didn’t, uh…”

“Oh! No, just the wine. Should be a fresh pair there next to your cushion. Your brother took good care of you.” She stands up and puts her jacket back on, as guilt washes over Callum. He’s just worrying _everyone_ these days, isn’t he? “No idea what they’ll do about the stained ones. Given you’re a _prince,_ I suppose they just toss those, do they? Anyway, if you’re alright, I’ll goan let them know.”

Just like that, she’s gone. He feels bad, making her sit in a dark room and watch over him like that. At least his secret is safe so far. 

The archmage is certainly interesting. Not at all the spooky old bearded guy he’d been picturing -- though Callum has to remind himself that he is certainly _old._ The things he said about _gravity_ and the travels of light alone add what is now an obviously important dimension to Callum’s previously-shallow connection, but he still wants to learn more. 

If he could go to the nexus in person, that would be even better, but his hopes are pretty far from _up,_ as far as that’s concerned.

He wriggles into the new pair of pants quickly, and sets about rifling through the room looking for paper and a pen. Once he finds it, he draws the rune Aaravos showed him, something he _apparently_ should have learned _first._

_Put this rune on your body, and your astral form will perceive mine, the way I naturally perceived yours._

Startouch must not care much for privacy. Has he been watching him this whole time? If he has, what’s taken him so long to say something? Still, if Aaravos can already see Callum, Callum might as well make sure it goes both ways. Aaravos doesn’t exactly project total trustworthiness, but they’re _both_ too aware of how much Callum has to gain by cooperating for either of them to play games.

It isn’t as if he doesn’t _recognize_ that Aaravos is dangling knowledge of -- of magic, of the key, of a lot of things -- just out of his reach, but what choice does he have?

The only thing he has to choose is how and when and how much to tell Rayla, or anyone else, about all this. 

* * *

It isn’t the first time Soren’s found Raum standing on the seawall at the bottom of the hill, but he’s usually more sensibly dressed. A fine mist of spray clings to his hair, kicked up by the wind. Since Soren got back from his fishing trip with two extra passengers a few days back, they’ve been talking in circles off and on, and only ever about the same couple of things. 

Maybe not circles, but spirals, each loop tightening toward a rotten, uncomfortable, unavoidable center. That same inevitability Soren saw before they even got back to shore, Raum surely sees now as well, no matter how hard he’s trying to pretend he doesn’t -- possibly even to himself.

“I really do think it was just a one-time thing,” Soren says not for the first time, his voice low so as not to startle. He casts a glance backward, up the slope. 

Firelight flickers at his father’s window. Yamina and Jowan were already asleep when Soren left, but dad’ll likely be up writing for some time. When _dad_ sleeps, Soren’s never been sure.

For all his reservations, dad kept him and Claudia safe enough most of the time growing up, and he knew the kids’ father besides. Having them stay with him for a bit until something else can be arranged makes a certain amount of sense. 

Raum shakes his head. “You _would_ think that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Before I got there, they weren’t taking anyone under fourteen. Then there was a twelve-year-old, and _that_ was a shock. Then this kid says she wasn’t the first _or_ only one her age?”

“Still a big jump down to seven,” Soren suggests, climbing up onto the wall and shrugging in what he hopes is a reassuring way. “At least as a routine thing.”

“You don’t know that place like I do. If they hadn’t run away, people would eventually have adapted, they’d have just--” Raum’s jaw works and he swallows. “It turns out you can _adapt_ just about anyone into whatever awful shape you want, if you push the right buttons for long enough. Imagine how much quicker and easier it is when they’re _kids_.”

Soren doesn’t argue. They both have to believe that’s true, that it could happen to anyone. They _have_ to.

Raum goes on: “Guarantee they’d have had him turning on his own _sister_ eventually. Who knows, if they raised him up right, maybe he could’ve been the next _Minister of Justice._ ”

Ouch. Or at least, ouch-adjacent. Deputy-ouch. Soren tries to let it roll off his back. “Well, now he won’t be.”

“No, it’ll just be the _next one_ instead. If you’re going to start putting your trust in them now, you might as well go all the way and head home.”

 _Obviously_ he’s not going back to the way things were, but Raum’s trending awfully close to the core of that spiral, as close as either of them are going to get without touching it. 

_Head home._

What does home even look like now? If they’re sending children _that_ young to _that place,_ would Soren even recognize it? Was this _always_ possible, some terrible darkness just lurking under the surface, waiting for the cover to be pulled back before it swallowed everyone? 

“Don’t make me be the one to say it,” Soren says, loud not out of anger but just to be heard over the noise of the wind and water, arms pressed against his own sides for warmth. He’s not dressed for the weather either. “That’s what my dad would do, you know? Make me be the one to say it. Walk me right up to the idea and watch me take a swing. _You’re_ the one who made me promise--”

“--Knew you’d go there.”

“I _promised!”_ Soren repeats. “That means something to me. Thing is, I distinctly remember a _we_ in there.” 

“It feels so far away now, like it’s someone else’s story. Doesn’t it feel that way to you? I think I almost had myself convinced. Until…” Raum trails off.

Until those kids showed up wearing clothes like the ones he threw in a fire earlier this year. _Until I ruined it,_ Soren tries-and-fails to avoid thinking. He feels like an asshole, like Raum's finally found something that looks a little like peace and here Soren is trying to yank it out from under him.

It _isn’t_ Soren doing it, though. The future is marching toward both of them. For a second, he can see a flash of it, an image like the tide coming in bit by bit, first up to their ankles, then their knees, and then their chins, and--and there is nothing in the world that can hold it back. All they can do is swim, or not.

“Whatever happens,” Raum gestures broadly, as if _whatever_ doesn’t have an obvious-if-vague meaning everyone’s been thinking and no one wants to voice, “the last thing you need is to be dragging dead weight. I can’t ask you to stay, but--”

“You think I don’t want to stay here?” Soren’s dander is up, now, half for reasons he can easily argue about and half for reasons he can’t, so he focuses on that first half. 

“I think… _I_ spent the last year trying to figure out why you put so much on the line to pull me out of the fire. _Finally_ you turned up with those kids and it all made sense. You’re just--You’re the kind of guy who saves people. You’re a hero, Soren!” He’s laughing now, but there’s something sick about it, like he doesn’t _want_ it to be true, which doesn’t make any sense.

“C’mon, it’s not like you’re--”

“The shit I did in that place, you wouldn’t even look me in the eye if--”

“Well maybe if you’d _tell_ me, I could decide that for myself!” He hasn’t pressed for details until now, and he’s regretting it, not because he imagines there’s any version of that story where any of it is truly Raum’s fault, but because maybe if he’d gotten it off his chest, he’d be _handling_ this.

“What does it matter? Even without that. Look at you, and look at me. I’m not a soldier, or a politician, or a mage.” Raum counts, fingers emerging aggressively from a fist. “I’m not even a good person! Sometimes I can’t decide if I’m even a _whole_ person! What good do you think I can--”

Soren, having had quite enough, shoves Raum, right in the chest. He stumbles backward along the foot-or-so-wide stone ledge. On one side is a thigh-high drop to the sandy dirt, on the other, maybe three times as far down to the spitting black sea. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Proving a point,” Soren says, taking a big step forward and telegraphing the next shove. “I know it’s been awhile, but you always used to wi--”

Raum dips backward this time. Soren’s energy carries him forward, off-balance, careless. Raum bats his arms both toward the horizon, ducks, and knocks out Soren gracefully backwards.

Muscle memory is a hell of a thing, clearly.

Soren’s attention shifts automatically to controlling the fall. Sure, he still slips off the wall and lands on his hip in the dirt, but at least he went down on the right side.

“See!?” He shouts from the ground. 

“What _point_ are you proving, by taking a dive? That you think I’m stupid enough to believe you defended a _king_ like that?”

The look on Raum’s face is a funny thing. His brows are furrowed, but a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. Energetic tension lurks in his cheeks, in the set of his shoulders. Soren _knows_ that look. He _remembers_ that look from sparring matches way back when. If Raum were a cat, his pupils would be _huge._

“Would have been easier if you were,” Soren says through the effort of vaulting back up on the wall. “Less worthwhile, though.”

Raum scoffs, and Soren takes the opening. He staggers his jabs this time -- Raum’s dodge puts him right in position to take Soren’s second, lower hit, right to the ribs. Sure, he pulls it, but they both know it’s there. Raum returns the favor, elbow to the spot where neck meets shoulder.

“You want to prove something, go ahead.” Raum slips past Soren nimbly, forcing him to turn around just in time for a couple of near-misses, one whizzing past Soren’s ear and the other skimming his hip, forcing Soren to retreat. “Maybe once I fail to live up to your imagination, you’ll get the picture.” 

“Only works if it’s fair,” Soren points out. _No dives for you either._

“You really have no faith in me?” Raum gets him good, not in the ear but next to it, the angle suggesting a last-second adjustment.

The rules of force are more refined and controlled than when they were younger, but just as clear, even unspoken. There’s as much strength keeping each other on their toes as anything. It’s the _strategy_ they have to give their best to.

A move or two later, they’re as in sync as ever -- Soren’s airtight training challenged by Raum’s airy, slippery footwork, a natural advantage atop the seawall. _Damn_ if he didn’t miss this.

He’d expected kicks for obvious reasons. He was ready for that. What Raum offers is something entirely different. Every chance he gets, he darts in close, _so_ close it kind of fries Soren’s brain a little, feeling the heat off his skin, smelling the salt on him. 

For a guy with only one hand (and elbow) to work with, Raum sure knows how to make it seem like he’s got _five,_ little strikes and odd touches _everywhere --_ shoulder, side, neck, thigh, demanding total control of Soren’s attention. Soren blocks an elbow and puts his knuckles into Raum’s sternum. _You want a distraction, here you go._

It works. He takes the opportunity with Raum off balance to take his foot out and send him down, one leg bent awkwardly underneath itself. Soren knows better than to let him move -- he pins Raum’s hips with his own (though the wall gives him little room and the edges dig into his kneecaps) and knocks his hand away twice before catching it. 

Despite the cold, they’re both sweating. This is _way_ too close to more than one dream Soren’s had.

He’s so ready to declare victory (if he can remember what words are) he doesn’t see it coming. If his life depended on it he could still not describe the fishlike maneuver that _drags_ their bodies together (a sensation that he suspects will appear in entirely new-and-improved dreams) and then sends them both tumbling off the wall and into the dirt. 

All he knows is he’s been punched in the back by the ground and he can’t get enough air, he can hardly move.

In the work of a second Raum’s reversed them entirely, pinning both Soren’s hands above his head (was his hand always so _broad?)_ It’s strategy and care all at once, rendering him immobile but, to be fair, freeing his lungs and making it easier to catch his breath.

Their bodies are inches apart, faces so close from the hold, the longest of Raum’s curls is practically touching Soren’s cheek. 

“I thought you weren’t taking a dive,” Raum says through panted breaths.

“Wasn’t,” Soren manages. _I was just completely thrown off by thinking about how we tiptoed around each other for a_ year _and I could have had_ this _if I just suggested a little training at literally any time,_ he doesn’t say. 

“You really _are_ rusty. You actually want this?” 

“Want--” His voice gives out unflatteringly as his heart stops beating.

“To be a hero. To throw yourself into the jaws of something unfathomable in the hope of breaking a couple of its teeth.”

“Oh. That.” Soren tries not to look down at the skin revealed by the forward sag of Raum’s shirt. “Yeah. I mean. I don’t think I can live with myself if I just hide here, not anymore.”

Raum pushes off, briefly scraping Soren’s wrists in the dirt and lifting himself away into a graceful stand. He offers his hand, and Soren takes it. There’s a tremor there, when Raum helps him up.

“And you think there’s something I can contribute to this?”

“Technically you uh… just proved my point about you not being dead weight,” Soren answers easily. “So yeah, I do,”

“Then I’m with you.”

Their gazes catch and hold for a moment before they head back up through the neighborhood. 

“There must be something,” Soren wonders out loud, if barely. 

“Something?”

“I just… I was thinking about what you said there, about the jaws, and the teeth. You’re right. If we went back, what we’d be up against? The only way we’d have a chance is if there’s some kind of weak spot, you know? Like the keystone in an arch. Something small but powerf--Claudia!?”

She’s waiting for them by the tree-fence, to Soren’s shock. Claudia gives him a once-over and she must notice the drying sweat and unseasonal attire on both of them, because she narrows her eyes slightly. Soren tenses his face back. It’s one of those sibling-telepathy conversations, along the lines of _what were YOU up to?_ And _do not say a single word or I will find a way to murder you._

“Is everything alright?” Raum checks. 

“I came to talk about going back,” she says, “but it sounds like you’re having the same thought.”

Soren swallows. “It’s just…”

“Yeah.” Claudia nods in the direction of dad’s house. “What they _went_ through? I mean, no offense, Raum, it sucks you were there too, but how things must _be_ if that’s on the table for a little _kid?”_

Raum shakes his head. “No, I agree. I just… you didn’t see it. It’s bigger than just Doctrina Limen. It’s institutional.”

Soren nods along. “Even when I left, it was like… I don’t know. We have to do something, but what?”

Claudia looks over their shoulders. “Dad?”

 _“Keep your voices down,”_ he scolds. “I could hear you from all the way--if _anyone_ needs their sleep, it’s those two children.”

“Whoops,” she whispers. Her hand covers her mouth in contrition.

Dad speaks quietly in turn. “I think we’ve been mulling over similar things. I have a _thought,_ incomplete as it is.”

“Yeah?” Soren urges.

“It’s about the border,” he says, making a storyteller’s eye-contact with each of them, “and the dam of magic.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just for fun I will note that Edile originally had an entirely different name and then I was like you know what, no, I will be incredibly unsubtle about this instead.


	23. Book Six: Ocean | Chapter Three: Echolocation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”_   
>  **― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know so much more about boats and sailing after writing this chapter than I knew before and almost none of it actually got used. Maybe in the next one.
> 
> By the way, the village outside of Elarion that's been referenced a few times and that inspired the name of Manawa's village is called Sedj because it's was once "Sea's Edge" and got smooshed together over time. 
> 
> It's a bit of a weird one, but I think after all my arranging and rearranging, this is the best of the options. Features a lot of my favorite thing: Viren spiraling a little.
> 
> P.S. If you followed a subscription link and left the tab open awhile, please reload, I made like 900 tiny edits after I thought I was done editing.

**Book Six: Ocean**

**Chapter 3: Echolocation**

Opeli breaks the surface of awareness, standing in the middle of a grand hallway on the first floor of the castle, just outside the ballroom. Cold rolls off the stone and glass of the window wall behind her, snow-clouds diffusing the sun into a wash of white. 

She barely stops herself running an idle hand over the broken hairs at the crown of her head, escaping as they do from the taut bun she’s adopted as a compromise with herself. Sometimes, under stress, she plucks the strange ones that break the smooth pattern, runs them through her fingers and feels their imperfections in detail before discarding them. 

There's nothing the matter with the new uniform (even if the dark colors do startle her in the mirror on occasion) and her head is uncovered for duty, not vanity or carelessness (she reminds herself again and again when guilt creeps in) but it’s hard not to become self-conscious after so many years of life beneath the hood.

Only a few minutes lost, surely. If someone walked by (she probably wouldn’t have noticed if they did) they may have thought she was just appreciating the tapestry, not so lost in her own head she completely forgot herself.

She sets out in the direction of her office, her own footfalls lulling her back to her thoughts.

It started with the tapestry, at least. She never really used to think about it, it was just a part of the background of her existence. Even before that, the old cloister had a number of similar pieces, close enough in style that the difference in subject matter didn’t stand out to her when she arrived for her fellowship.

The subject, of course, is war, or the end of it. The sprawling landscape as seen from the hilltop, above and behind Queen Sama, the artifact in her outstretched hands emitting so much light as to obscure itself: an artist’s clever concealment of the great unknown. 

What bothers her though, is the question of how faithful a representation this really is. Specifically, the _light_ aspect. How certain can they be that an accurate portrayal of Queen Sama’s decisive victory wouldn’t show, instead, an unnatural twist of violet, or a sick flash of crimson? Dark mages were more common back then, after all.

Isn’t it important to be certain, if they're going to pass into a more enlightened age? To make a more purposeful choice in artwork? 

The Queen Regent hasn’t said anything, not even of the far-more-distasteful historical hangings that dot the halls around the grand ballroom (including a depiction of the exile monstrous enough that Opeli is forced to assume it apocryphal.) But then, she can’t exactly come inside and look at them, can she? And Opeli herself would be embarrassed to describe them in any detail.

Surely Runaan will have noticed, though he hasn’t said anything. It occurs to her he may be waiting for her to bring it up, to prove that she is attentive, that she is loyal, that she doesn’t secretly harbor any imbalanced priorities.

Nafai’s clothes and tools are so elegantly crafted, he may have suggestions for where they could procure replacements. It would be a show of faith and unity if the castle commissioned an elvish artisan. Surely one of their factions has tapestry as an art form?

The idea appeals to the cleric’s flame that still burns in her heart, because she knows at least loosely what such art might feature. By now, most clerics have probably surrendered to the reality that most people see them as masters of ceremonies and little more, but Opeli has not. Elves may have some differences in vocabulary from clerics, they may weight certain parts of Mother Nature’s body above others, but this is a much lesser sin by far than trying to bend her to their will as certain humans seem to desire. At the very least, they still exalt her one way or another, and put her in her proper place at the head of all things. 

After all, it hardly makes sense to work so hard to purge a toxin like dark magic from the blood of society, only to enshrine it in the castle halls. It isn’t as if she’s looking to _burn_ the things, just… put them away. She could leave them in the hands of--

Well. Opeli rounds the corner and starts in surprise at the additional body standing between her own and her office door, much smaller and softer than the two guards in the corners. _Think of a spirit and the spirit arrives,_ indeed.

“Minister Opeli,” greets the head librarian with smiling respect.

“Farla,” Opeli returns tightly. “Just the person I wanted to see.”

“Likewise, dear.”

“Please, come in.” Opeli precedes her into the office, her steps a gentle shuffle across the ivory rug. “Can I get you anything? Tea? Do have a seat.”

“No need,” she answers. “I won’t be long.”

Goodness. If Opeli hadn’t been suspicious before of how interested the old woman was in Viren’s disgusting _collection,_ the plausibly-deniable chill in her demeanor now would be enough to draw concern on its own. 

“Well,” Opeli tries to get off the back foot, hovering over her chair without quite deciding to sit down herself. “What is it I can do for _you?”_

“It has come to my attention that you may be in possession of an item of historical significance,” she says, courteous-but-arch. “I merely wanted to determine if that was the case, and as you’ve already dismissed my assistant when he came to _inquire--”_

“If you’re referring to the former high mage’s staff,” Opeli nearly spits, recalling the eccentrically-dressed young man and his pushy nonsense about _Miss Farla says it belongs in a museum,_ “this isn’t up for negotiation. I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you or anyone else. It’s for your own safety. For everyone’s. Surely you can understand.”

Farla gives her a sort of curtsy that hasn’t been in fashion for forty years and, all poison sugar, thanks Opeli for her time and excuses herself, leaning heavily on her cane. 

Only once she’s out of sight down the hall does Opeli sink into her chair, pull a sachet of powder from her desk drawer, and empty its contents into the cup of cold tea she must have forgotten hours ago. The grains don’t all dissolve, but she drinks them down despite the scrape on her tongue. Branchfolk medicine trends more bitter than what she’s used to, but it’s effective enough. It’s going to be a long night, after all.

 _Historical interest, indeed._ Just for that, she’s cutting the damn tapestries to ribbons.

* * *

Viren waits for Aaravos on the mainland beach. Even at its most dilated, the blood-magic link gives him the _haziest_ of guesses about when Aaravos will arrive. Sure, he _could_ make him wait, but Viren’s never enjoyed playing that kind of game. Given the choice, he’ll take a moment to himself instead.

Aaravos is nimble on the cliff face and when he lands safely on the beach, he dusts his hands on his cloak, and it becomes clear their hue is a bit closer to what Viren remembers seeing in the mirror. And are those more stars on his skin? It’s not hard to imagine this is somehow related to whatever he was so happy about nearly a week ago. 

“That was quick,” Viren says by way of greeting, referring to both the climb and the trek back from the desert.

“I had assistance. A…” Aaravos pauses there, to look off fondly into the distance over Viren’s shoulder. “A friend, I suppose. Naimi. An interesting creature.”

“Is that wise?”

He hums thoughtfully, and either the sound or the link between them or both transmits more information than sits on the surface. “She will not cause us undue trouble, of that I am as certain as one _can_ be when Skywings are involved.”

If Viren’s eyebrows weren’t already at maximum question, they would get there now. Still, he does what he came to do, offering his elbow to Aaravos as though escorting him to dinner. Aaravos takes it gamely enough, relaxing at the change in the view ahead, and they set out across the glass. 

The water is calm and the chill dissipates as they approach Manawa, now returning to its near-preternaturally temperate state after a mere few weeks of what might loosely be called _actual winter_. The locals continue to complain, of course, and the Durenese children seem to agree, but this break in the cold comes months earlier than what Viren’s used to.

Much of the walk is consumed by their respective stories. Aaravos’ are of his travels (he's notably circumspect about the events in the desert) and Viren’s of the events on the island, most particularly the more recent developments. For the most part, Aaravos seems to be only half-listening (though Viren knows him better at this point than to discount how much he’s filing away.) 

That is, until Viren brings up his thoughts about the dam. He can feel the tension creep into Aaravos’ wrist, and watches his head dip. He follows the movement and they both regard the water beneath them, sloshing gently against the underside of the bridge.

“Do you think it’s possible?” Viren presses. “In theory, it seems like it ought to be. Claudia and I constructed a miniature-scale barrier and destroyed it using a kind of concussive deluge of magical force, not unlike--”

“An explosion,” Aaravos says, clearly visualizing it.

“--Of course it was all dark magic, so there are unknowns to consider, but in _principle,_ the concept appears sound. The trouble is that short of sublimating _at least_ one archdragon, I’m at a loss for what could possibly provide enough--what?”

He stops short in response to an interrupting chuckle, the spirit of which seems more like a sigh. 

“Aaravos?”

“All this time,” Aaravos wonders under his breath, “I’ve complained that the Stars have no sense of humor. Well.”

“So?”

 _“Not_ an archdragon. Not _one,_ at any rate. That barrier was a _group effort._ Six kinds of magic, woven together.” He entangles the long fingers of his two hands, briefly trapping Viren’s arm against his side. “None of them wanted to be left out, nor to allow any source the chance to destroy it unilaterally.”

“Six? But the last Star dragon perished _long_ before--” Viren works through the puzzle and he hears betrayal creep into his own voice. “ _You_ helped them build it.”

“What choice did I have?” There’s Aaravos, always so smooth until one presses certain buttons. His voice snaps around his words and he regains control like a bird correcting course after a gust of wind. “That was the last straw. It proved my presence would, for the time, be a weapon _against_ my own interests. After _that_ I made myself scarce for centuries. Does it comfort you to know I did my own part deliberately poorly? Come to think of it, perhaps _that’s_ why...”

“Why what?” Viren presses, when Aaravos’ sudden contemplation trails off into silence.

“Nothing, for the moment.” And then, a little dramatically in response to Viren’s scolding glance: “My most solemn oath, Viren: we’ll get to it. It’s about someone I met.”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Viren considers bitterly. The idea of trying (again) to sublimate a _single_ archdragon was already making the back of his neck sweat. Without any Star dragons in existence, even the miserable impossibility of gathering _five_ others no longer seems to matter. “If what you say is true, it’s hopeless, in any case. Forget I suggested anything.”

“Yes, that is _evidently_ not a promising method to achieve your aims,” Aaravos lilts. 

“If you’re suggesting there’s another way, I’d appreciate you simply getting to the point rather than behaving like a schoolmistress awaiting revelation from a slow student.”

“What fun would that be?” Aaravos teases through a hawkish smile, before settling into the truth. “I await nothing but the opportune moment, to explain things _once._ ” 

Hours later, they wind up like something out of a joke. _An elf, two mages, a soldier, and a farmer walk into a bar._

The bar, though, is replaced by the well-trodden patch of floor in front of Claudia’s fireplace, the room bathed in its pinkish light. Soren and Raum crowd behind the slab of a countertop that juts out from the wall on one side and makes a galley of the space they occupy, both of them choosing a lean over a slouch, hemmed in as they are by the curve of the ceiling. 

Aaravos would have to hunch no matter where he stood, and Claudia, despite being pleased to see him, still watches him like she thinks he might steal something. Viren can’t entirely blame her. It’s palpable, the _change_ now that he can access even a single thread in the rope of his connection with the Stars. 

All eyes are on him anyway, as he explains:

“I told you of The Key once,” he nods to Viren and to Claudia to acknowledge that they’ve already heard that story, “when I spoke of Sama, and Aditi.”

“You said you took her Arcanum with it,” Claudia recalls, a touch impatient. “Although I never really got how that’s possible. I thought an Arcanum was mostly knowledge.”

“An Arcanum present from birth and one later gained are only the same in the way an original tooth is the same as a false one, simply because they are both functional. The former is an inherent part of the individual, a piece of the source that draws its like, and the understanding flows naturally from being suffused. It shapes growth, development, and perspective. A learned Arcanum is more a _gateway_ through which one can invite magic to pass.”

It sounds to Viren that magic is not so different from language. One thinks in one’s mother tongue. Its vocabulary and structure inform the mode of that thought. Even studying another language for years doesn’t yield that same intimacy, no matter how useful it is academically, or socially. Only in one’s first language does a _curse_ have weight.

“The ordinary state of a learned Arcanum _is_ empty,” Aaravos goes on. “A _natural_ Arcanum is the opposite. Emptiness is anathema. It is death. Once, I would have called that emptiness impossible.”

“Like how you can’t really breathe out all the air in your lungs,” Claudia connects. “Even if you breathe out as hard as you can, there’s always a tiny bit left, to keep the air sacs open.”

In Viren’s peripheral vision, he realizes Soren is quietly attempting the feat and coughing. He wouldn’t have known the spongy look of a lung, not having stood across the procedure table from Viren as Claudia once did, carefully opening the chest of an icebreath boar.

Did Aditi know it was possible for her to forge a new connection with the Sun? She’d met Aaravos, who’d done similar feats, so she must have had the inkling. It wouldn’t be the same, but surely it would be better than nothing. 

“I took everything from her, and there it lived, within the Key. If her Arcanum _was_ like a lung, the Key was…” Aaravos’ gaze falls on the device by the fire. “A _bellows,_ carried in my palm.”

Viren is almost staggered by it. “A store of magic at your fingertips, however much you could collect, of any source, without the danger and inconvenience of components? That's…”

What word can he even use to describe it?

“Did I not say I was _elegant and efficient?_ Sama cannot be blamed for desiring it. If anything, I am impressed with how closely her descendants guarded it all this time, until recently. It is precisely the kind of thing humans ordinarily cannot leave be. It was meant to unlock knowledge and power. I confess, I never pictured _this_ use.”

There’s a ringing in Viren’s ears. The first time he’d heard the story, he’d been focused on Aaravos’ arrest, on what he’d done to Aditi. If he’d taken the time to truly consider the matter, he probably could have arrived at this conclusion then, but there were distractions, new problems to solve, and he simply never returned to it long enough to realize. 

“That’s the riddle, then.” Claudia’s voice is a thousand miles away, Viren barely registers her working through it as he silently burns, he may as well be on another planet from the rest of them. “How do you turn a _bellows_ into an explosive?”

Soren says something that makes Claudia laugh and seems to please Aaravos in some way, but the conversation goes on without Viren.

_How closely her descendants guarded it, all this time, until recently._

Harrow. Harrow knew. Hee must have known, there’s no getting around it. Viren approaches it from every direction, but those last five damned words make it impossible to ignore, or reason away, or pretend. It would be denial to the point of delusion to imagine otherwise. 

_Harrow knew_ he had, in his possession… well, Viren doesn’t go quite so far as to imagine he had any idea how it functioned. To say the man had no head for magic would be politely euphemistic, really it was as though his mind treated anything about magic the way duck feathers treat raindrops. Still, he had to have at least been told a sketch, that it was powerful, that it was magic, that it had belonged to Queen Sama, perhaps even that it was the famed war-winning artifact.

How _long_ did he know? Did Meihanyr share this secret on his deathbed? Or tell Harrow when he first became a man? No matter how Viren rifles through his own memories, he can’t recall the slightest hint, the most minute sign that he knew something of this magnitude and wasn’t sharing. 

Wasn’t he curious? How easy would it have been for him to say _Viren, I want you to look into this._ And what might Viren have _accomplished_ if he’d had such a tool at his disposal? 

How it would have changed the battle at the spire _alone,_ or prevented it altogether?

He storms out through the woven mat door without explaining himself, only faintly aware of the brief silence that follows his exit. 

Bastard. Selfish, idiotic, _myopic--_

None of this had to happen. He could have been _alive_. A device that could absorb magic, take it away from someone, store it for future use, release it on command, one that ended a seven-faction war and brought peace to the west, and Harrow never so much as breathed a word of it. Viren wants to throw himself into the sea just picturing how differently things might be if he’d only known.

Did Harrow not _trust_ him? He’d never thought there were secrets between them, not like _this_. Even the business with the egg had been clear, Harrow’s public claims an elaborate performance, the last iteration of which was a cruelly frustrating twist of the knife Viren couldn’t counter with others in the room. 

It was a _good_ performance, though. As far as he’s aware, no one saw through it. Maybe that was a hint Viren simply didn’t want to see, a clear indicator Harrow was a better liar than Viren knew, or wanted to believe.

Did Harrow’s mother know of the Key? Did Sarai? 

There’s no asking them now, but that doesn’t leave Viren any less curious.

Does _Ezran?_ No, he can’t possibly. As far as Viren is aware, Harrow spent the afternoon before his death writing little more than a set of one-day instructions for his sister-in-law and something sentimental for the older boy. The crown prince was surely too guileless for information like this.

Viren wonders if experience is changing that, now, if he even still lives.

He scolds himself anew, he should have said something. He was so focused on preventing that death at the time that to say something about what was to come would have been practically admitting defeat. Still, he should have planned better for the worst.

“Dad?” Claudia’s voice is briefly small, behind him. 

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not,” he agrees, “but it’s all in the past. Nothing for it.”

“O… kay.” She audibly doesn’t know what to do with that. Because Claudia is Claudia, she moves on, tucking the red side of her hair behind her ear. She said he’d get used to it, and she was right. “Do you want to know what you missed?”

She takes his nod and gesture as it’s intended.

He listens, and realizes with a certain resignation that he apparently left at an inopportune moment. It takes him a moment to parse her explanation about _removing the sides._ Up to this point he’d been picturing a key shape. By no means did he expect a _cube,_ and his heart drops into his stomach all over again when he realizes that he’s seen the damn thing himself, time and time again, sitting innocently in the holiday lodge game room.

Hidden in plain sight, he’d taken it for a toy. 

“Seems like it doesn’t matter where the six sides are,” Claudia says. “They can still charge up the center, even hundreds of miles away. That’s Star magic for you, I guess. We can split up and use the nexuses to channel power. The center thing now isn’t stable enough to take all that, but the amplifier gem Aaravos made for your old staff would apparently be _perfect_. Obviously the first, biggest problem is getting all that.”

She goes on. The bit about Sarai’s boy takes him by surprise. He would never in a million years have guessed. He’ll have questions, eventually, but amidst the flood of higher priorities, he has little choice but to assimilate the situation now and process it later.

There’s a flash of concern for _Claudia’s_ possible feelings about it, but more than anything, she seems satisfied to finally understand the bizarre sight she caught at the Storm Spire that day. The unanswered question must have weighed on her more than he realized. 

Viren wonders out loud why Soren never mentioned Callum’s newfound skill, and Claudia laughs when she speculates that he wasn’t hiding it at all. 

“He had a lot on his mind. He probably just forgot. I mean...” Claudia glances back inside, and raises her eyebrows as if to say, _would it really be that surprising?_

Viren lets himself be coaxed back inside. They all act like nothing happened. Aaravos harps on how none of this is even remotely possible if he isn’t freed from his cell properly, adding another layer of complication to an already impossible task. 

The important thing now is to prepare to travel, even if the details of what they’ll do when they get there looks like one question mark after another.

Alone at the end of the night and reviewing it all against the backdrop of the ceiling instead of sleeping, optimism is out of Viren’s reach. Much remains theoretical at best, and depends on mountains that seem far too high to climb: liberating staff and Key both, approaching the nexuses undetected, and then _using_ the thing once their colossal, overwhelmingly powerful foes have inevitably sensed them?

And even besides all that, there is Aaravos’ unswerving dedication to escape from his imprisonment. It cannot be a coincidence that the designs of which he’s so smoothly convinced them all just _happen_ to require it. ( _And what might he do after that?_ The question plucks at the threads in the back of Viren’s mind. _What would he have done if you won?_ )

There are so many moving parts, so many blanks still yet to fill, success is difficult to picture.

He envies Soren: so full of grim, trite determination to _do the right thing,_ as if it's so clear what that looks like. Given Sigrin was as outcome-oriented as Viren much of the time, he wonders where his son gets it from. Sarai’s influence, perhaps? Soren certainly spent enough time with her as a child and _she_ was like that, inspiring and infuriating all at once, obsessed with _rightness_ in each little action and decision, blind to where it might lead. 

A surplus of faith, he once called it, to trust that one right step after another would lead somewhere, to him it was like trying to walk a straight line with closed eyes, inevitably headed off-course.

She only threw it back at him, accusing him of over-certainty that his goals were the right ones, that he wouldn’t lose too much along the way in his single-mindedness. Harrow didn’t understand, he thought it was a missed shot -- he knew Viren was never that sure -- but it wasn’t. Sarai’s words struck home _because_ of the secret doubts she _knew_ he would always harbor.

They always divided there, Sarai’s affection doled out in attempts to change him, Harrow’s in taking him as he was.

The allure of seeing the world her way is an obvious one. Beautiful, and graceful, every effort ending in either noble and upright failure, or virtuously unambitious success as a natural reward for pure-heartedness. 

To Viren, it’s _cheating,_ like taking a turn in cuesports and crowing childishly about a sunken ball, whether it was planned or a happy accident. If no one knew what you meant to do, only that you were doing your best, any outcome could seem like destiny.

No, in Viren’s world, one announces the aim _first,_ which ball and which pocket. _Success_ is merely a meeting of expectations, valueless without a goal to compare it to, and in its absence, all eyes will fall on that failure. (He’s always had tremendous respect for those professions which go largely invisible when carried out correctly, only ever noticed when in error.)

Is it his nature? His upbringing? Has dark magic framed his outlook, dependent as it is on the setting of intention? More than likely it’s all of those things.

There among the first stirrings of dawn, he reviews matters once more. It doesn’t matter if no one nearby is wakeful enough to hear him.

He calls his shot.

* * *

The Ship-cave is aptly named. 

To Viren’s adjusting eyes, it appears as a kind of natural dry dock, the front of the cave showing lines of sediment and slime where the water drains and fills in turns as the year goes by. It’s so well-hidden by the curve of the island he can’t imagine having noticed it if he wasn’t escorted right to it, the mouth of the cavern large and startling from the angle in front of it.

The vessel itself is a two-masted, lateen-sailed twist on a caravel, obviously built from the instructions of Manawa’s ancestors right here, to fit the small space. It is completely unadorned, every curve and line a matter of function and _not_ form (it is even a little ugly in Viren’s opinion) and it has no name whatsoever. 

So far as he can tell, everyone just calls it _The Ship._

After all, while there’s no shortage of little rowboats, and one or two miniature trawlers, _The Ship_ stands alone in every important respect.

Viren and Claudia had been so anxious about telling the ladies at the paperhouse that they were planning to leave, neither expected them to all begin fluttering about like excited hens chattering excitedly about _The Ship!_ It took a moment to register that they were offering an opportunity to save time and risk by sailing back, rather than trekking across the land. 

Given The Ship’s status as community property (even disused) there had to be a vote, taken by going door to door and asking folk what they thought of the idea. Viren was sure this would be the end of it until, to his shock, it was nearly unanimous in their favor.

Some said yes because Yamina and Jowan’s story didn’t sit right with them. Giving up the ship felt like doing something about it, or at least supporting an attempt to do something about it. 

Others said yes because they fantasized about a future where they could safely visit the land of their ancestors. That was the mission the ship was built for in the first place, aborted for the fear of death or discovery, but if giving it up meant a safe mainland, they wouldn’t have to sail at all.

A few said yes because they simply didn’t care. They’d forgotten it was there, so it must not have been very important, and of course the mainland-people could have it in that case.

Eywesh squints at it. 

“It’ll need some work,” she says. “No one’s taken it very far in a long time.”

“What’s a long time?” Viren wonders.

“I was younger than your daughter,” Eywesh answers. “I hadn’t entered the nexus yet, then. There was an idea. Things were bad for a little while. We weren’t sure we were gonna make it. I was too young, I didn’t even know how bad it had been ‘til I got older. There was talk of trying to leave, trying to go back to Sedj, where we came from. But, well…”

“I imagine your attempts were probably not much more successful than ours,” Viren says grimly of the Katollen Expeditions of a century ago, a search for a land without dragons, largely doomed by Ocean dragons themselves and cut off at the knees by the spinning sea, among other troubles unique to maritime exploration. “By the look of this, we may even have been working from similar plans. Ours would have been from oral traditions initially, and then trial and error after, but the general concept is similar enough.”

Eywesh nods solemnly. “Sedj built incredible ships, or at least they seemed to think so, if you believe what they wrote down. ‘Course, they had a big advantage, that was before the sea was spinning.”

“It wasn’t always?”

“Calm as glass on their maps. Full of Brinefolk and dragons, but they had ways of managing. Brinefolk like to trade, they like collecting things. People of Sedj never worked out the pattern on what they’d take or reject, but if you had something they wanted, you were golden. The writings say that of all the elves, they had the most power with their kind of dragons, it wasn’t just _jump--how high,_ like the rest of ‘em. Your friend probably knows all about it.”

“I’ll make a note of asking him,” Viren decides. It’s impossible to know with Aaravos when he’s keeping a secret, or when he simply never decided it was important to mention a thing.

“We tried to copy their designs, but this is a pale imitation at best. Still, even after everything, it did make it home, so I’m hoping it’ll get you at least part of the way. There’s a bay where Sedj used to be, over the mountains from Elarion. We have maps you can use, old ones, but it’s the best we can do. I don’t know how far up the coast the spinning sea will let you, but it does spin widdershins. If the border’s where you claim, and you can get to that bay, you’ll be almost there.”

“How long will that be?”

“Less than a week. If you’re very lucky, could be four days, give or take.”

Viren nearly makes a crack about his luck, but that would hardly be fair. He was lucky enough to make it here.

She gives him a tour. The boards murmur beneath their steps, but the wood is solid, still heavy with the citronella-and-camphor scent unique to Manawa’s giant trees, their oils soundly despised by rot and insects alike. 

“You’ll need a crew, but not to worry. Smokeshades should do the trick,” Eywesh says. That, Viren supposes, puts paid to the idea that anyone might join their cause, no matter how much they fancy it in theory.

“Are you sure that’s alright?” Viren says, getting her attention as they shift the tiller just to make sure it still moves, and descend through the hatch into the lower portion of the ship, hands lit to navigate.

“The sailors who made it back always wanted to try again. I think they’d be pleased. It’s hardly unprecedented. We wouldn’t keep the remains if they weren’t… _on board_.” She waggles her eyebrows at her own joke. “Eh? Eh?”

Viren is too tied up in his own concern to enjoy it. “Not just the shades, all of it. I don’t want you to give us your only ship of its kind, and your people’s ashes, full of some dreamy vision of waiting for us to appear back over the horizon victorious. It may very well all be for nothing.”

“Then it’s for nothing,” she says, her voice echoing, dark retaking the space when she blocks the light from their hands by taking his in hers. “This thing’s been sitting here for decades, safe and sound. That’s not what it’s for. That’s not what any of us are for. _That’s_ what’s for nothing. Between _maybe_ for nothing, or _definitely_ for nothing? I’ll take _maybe_ every time, and so will the people who agreed to this. Evidently so will you, given enough of a shove.”

Sure. The last _shove_ saw Viren do blood magic with an ancient archmage he hardly knew.

He breaks away to shine his magelight around three tiny berths in the belly of the ship, four hammocks slung in each. He can picture the five of them, arranged much the same as on land, taking advantage of the sleepless shades to get a little more space than the sailors of old would have had.

“I thought I was retired,” Viren laments.

“Nah.” Flashes bounce around the hold as Eywesh gives him a dismissive wave with her light-hand. “My grandfather was like that. Every day he’d say I’m old, I’m not gonna do anything anymore, I’m just gonna relax, but then I’d find him spinning thread, or weaving, and I’d say grandpa, you said you were gonna relax, and he’d say I’ll relax after this, soon as I’m done.”

“I’m guessing he was never done.” 

“He died at his loom with a smile on his face.”

Viren chuckles on his way back up through the hatch and up the narrow stair onto the top deck. The slight dim of the cavern seems bright in comparison to the lower levels.

“‘Course _you?”_ Eywesh assesses, _“You’re_ gonna have to hand over the future and find something other than saving the world to work on, if _you_ want to die with a smile, but hey. One thing at a time.”

“Indeed.”

There’s nothing productive in mentioning that he has his doubts that will become an issue.

As soon as the ship is brought around to the western side of the island, there’s a kind of buzz around all five of them, socially. Maybe that’s been true to some extent since they arrived, off and on, but if so, the frequency has never been so much.

People keep giving them things. Some are useful things, like rope, spell components, and provisions, and he appreciates that. Then there are the other things: wooden jewelry, little glass figurines, decorative spoons, trinkets that Viren doubts will make it past wherever they’re forced by the whirlpool to disembark and continue on foot. Maybe they know that. Maybe it’s a quiet, gentle lack of faith, an assumption that their items will be given to the sea.

He accepts them, so as not to be rude, but it’s all very strange. His favorite gift is the elders’, little more than a listening ear as he goes over and over the hurdles they face. He is particularly fixated on the things locked up behind the castle walls, and Eywesh sympathizes.

The repairs and preparations reach a fever pitch the night before they sail, when New-South-Sedj throws them a farewell party on the southern beach, a mirror of the celebration they had for Claudia when she entered the nexus. It’s also a night of gifts for Yamina and Jowan, their transition to Quanah’s home something of an adoption, also a cause for festivities.

When everyone finally peels away home in the wee hours, Viren sits on the beach beneath the night sky. It is a good time to leave, with the moon nearly full. They’ll have bright light for the nights of the trip, if the weather stays as clear as the almanac predicts.

He tries the door one last time, but it remains locked to him.

The following morning, he wakes to what seems like the entire village assembled at the western seawall to say their farewells. Eywesh takes it upon herself to row them all out to where the boat waits in deeper water. 

Viren is the last to climb out of the boat, and Eywesh waves up at him as he ascends the ladder, before she turns to start back for the island.

Claudia takes three sets of ashes as Viren takes four. They synchronize inside the same vortex. 

_Ash of fallen, rise again, smoky sailors --_ and then, as the seven sailors emerge as shades, coalescing around their old tools from the deck of the ship, Viren and Claudia give them their orders: _help bring this ship and the souls on board safely to the Bay of Sedj._

The last time Viren raised shades, he could feel their fury as he set them about their task, their relentless malevolence seeping into the night. This, under the cloudless blue sky, is almost strange by comparison. It is still an unyielding sensation, always the way with shades, but they flutter with an adventurer’s intrepid resolve, their energy pulling to the sea like excited hounds in pursuit.

By the time they’re arranged, most everyone has dispersed, leaving the little cluster of homes to settle in for a long silence with darkened hearths. It’s strange to imagine nature overtaking them once more. 

It’s hardly a blink before they pass beyond the island’s veil, and all is out of sight.

* * *

Despite the strange atmosphere, returning to the Storm Spire is one of the great reliefs of Tiadrin’s life. She didn't even realize how much she needed it until it's in front of her.

At first, she doesn’t understand why the two of them, she and Lain, are met so far from the base of the spire by a young Sun dragon, peculiarly _bearing_ an elf! She’s never known a dragon that’s been amenable to _passengers_ before. It’s a touch of misunderstanding that sets them both to nerves, hand poised over a weapon that feels like home in her hand. 

The Sunfire elf, however, only puts her hands out, palms forward.

“I am General Janai, of Lux Aurea. I have the same cause as you. I come not to hinder your passage but to hasten it. Pyrrah has seen your coming and we are here to bring you to Queen Zubeia.”

“I think she means it,” Lain says, jerking his chin to indicate her empty scabbard. “No blade.”

“We’re alright, thank you anyway. I enjoy the climb,” Tiadrin says, relaxing into a lean on Lain’s shoulder.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. The way is not safe.” Janai explains, as the dragon plants herself rather stubbornly in Tiadrin’s path. 

For all her reservations about what seems like insanity (climbing on the back of a great bloody dragon) it’s actually wonderful. It is as if she has been bound at the wrists since the day she was released from the coin that trapped her, and rising above the cloud-layer shatters that fetter. 

Ironically, despite needing magic to breathe, she’d swear she can breathe _better_ up here than she did in the Silvergrove.

The cool stone of the spire’s peak beneath her feet, her footsteps echoing against the walls and ceiling, it’s all almost electric. The redemption she’s starving for is so near, so possible, and she needs only a glance at Lain to know they’re together in this, in every imaginable way.

She is startled to discover humans in one of the great-chambers, tents circled around a balcony as though they were camping in the woods, but on closer examination, they are mixed in roughly equal numbers with Sunfire elves. 

The queen must have approved this, but it’s still bizarre, that same missed-a-stair mental adjustment she had to get past in Katolis, amplified a hundred times over due to the setting. Avizandum would have pitched an absolute _fit._ Not that they were ever close -- Avizandum wasn’t here often enough for that -- it’s just a reminder that things truly have changed, that this isn’t the _same spire_ she first came to as a dragonguard any more than a river is the same river the second time washing in it. It’s on her to adjust. 

Eventually, she might even remember some of the names.

Nothing in her life, save giving birth to her daughter, has been as gratifying as meeting the child she tried to defend in the royal nestchamber, now hardly a child at all. Azymondias is one of the most beautiful sights she has ever seen, and sweetly, the feeling appears to be mutual. 

“He recognizes you,” Zubeia says, enormous eyes narrowed with joy. 

“You said he would,” Lain recalls of the time before, laughing at the static shock when Azymondias nuzzles his shoulder. 

“We’ve come to serve you once more, if you’ll have us.” Tiadrin drops to one knee, and Lain follows her down. 

The actual oath-renewing goes without a hitch, and Zubeia blames them not a jot for anything that happened. Their story preceded them, courtesy of Rayla and the boy. The one part she’d worried about is smooth as silk when the two tales are precisely the same, proving honesty. 

Trouble comes, as it always does, every _bloody_ time, just when she believes the trouble to be over. Later, everyone will assure her that it wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t have known, and it isn’t as if she could have said _no_ to the Queen of the Dragons when she wanted to hear more as the stories began to spiral outward. 

She speaks of her trek with Rayla, and of Runaan’s new posting eradicating dark magic. Apparently Zubeia heard of Prince Callum’s troubles, and hasn’t yet made up her mind what she thinks about it. _I still believe he is likely good, and his choices brought you back to us,_ she expresses at one point, but never quite finishes the thought. 

Pyrrah, present in the chamber, apparently interjects something about purification, but she’s too young to speak Common, so Tiadrin is forced to surmise the idea from Zubeia’s reply.

Considering how long a dragon can mull something over when they want to, Tiadrin’s not exactly expecting a verdict anytime within the boy’s life.

What causes the storm, quite literally, isn’t even own Tiadrin’s story, but one Rayla told her as they traveled together. It’s one known only to Rayla, Callum, and Azymondias, who apparently had collectively agreed _not_ to tell Queen Zubeia after she woke.

Well, and Sol Regem, but it’s not as if he was about to volunteer.

Later, the human general will speak with her hands, and with her friend as her voice, she will explain that Zubeia had been trying to be tolerant, to prove her trustworthiness, to prevent open challenge and maintain stability by doing no harm to Sol Regem’s often-rude followers. _Go ahead, watch me, it will bore you,_ was the intended message. Besides, recovery from egg-laying is a long process, and she hasn’t been certain of her ability to fend off _all_ of them. 

No one even realizes until it’s too late, until the words are out of Tiadrin’s mouth, about _\--and I don’t know if he was aff his heid or what, but there he was, sniffing and huffing and apparently so obsessed with punishing the boy for saving my daughter’s life, he didn’t even_ care _about whether Azymondias got home at all--_

Storm dragons are not known for their stoicism to begin with, even if Zubeia is perhaps a notch less mercurial than most, maybe a function of age. The mood until then had been so light, so relaxed, at times the queen seemed almost ready to nod off for the night. 

After that statement, though, the air drops several degrees. A creaking, slipping noise leads Tiadrin to glance up at the distant ceiling of the cavern, where a thin lattice of ice crawls like mold along the walls.

Only then does Tiadrin realize the mistake she’s made, and she is sure her chest will simply collapse.

“Can you…” Zubeia begins, raising her and twisting her head. Static crackles in the air. Beneath her scales, anger stiffens her muscles. “Elaborate?”

Well, again, it’s not exactly as if Tiadrin can say _no._ The cat’s already set amongst the pigeons, there’s little she can do but obey. 

She stammers answers and tries to ignore the way her hair begins to lift of its own accord.

When she’s heard enough, Zubeia is out into the sky on a shot of lightning precise enough not to harm anyone inside, but which leaves the air smelling astringent. Tiadrin has no doubt that if she chipped into the frozen walls, she’d find arm-width hunks of fulgurite inside. 

The brunt of the rage is borne by the watchers, the very reason Tiadrin wasn’t allowed to climb the spire independently. 

This storm is so out of the blue, most of them were already at rest. Not one was prepared, and not one dares go against her in her most extreme agitation. They are blown off the spire like dandelion seeds.

Tiadrin doesn’t know what happens to them, after that. For at least a little while, they don’t come back.

It is hours before it’s safe to go anywhere _near_ the outside. The humans are forced to drag their tents all the way to the opposite wall, as deep in the chamber as they can get, just so as not to be blown away. When her fury is exhausted, Tiadrin tries to apologize, but is only met with a hiss that it isn’t her fault. 

“I am glad to know the truth,” she says, words that sound like the sharpest blades and scare even Azymondias. “Remain here and keep him safe. That is my order.”

With that one command, she takes off again. This time, when she becomes lighting, she is simply gone, to parts unknown. 

More than ready to get some air, Tiadrin climbs the stairs to the top of the spire. Even Lain lets her have a moment alone. From there, she sits quietly, and watches the enormous, churning spiral of a storm chart a path of violence inexorably south.

* * *

“Raum?” Soren hisses into the dark.

No answer.

The third time Soren wakes to the hum and grumble of the ship, he is alone in the tiny berth. He hopes it’s morning. He always thought sleeping in a hammock would be relaxing, or fun, but the reality is disappointing, and he’s not a fan. 

His dreams are all awful. Losing teeth, falling off ledges, standard nightmare stuff now that he’s awake, but artificially ratcheted up by his brain to an eleven-out-of-ten on the misery scale while he’s still in them. Worse yet, they’re the kind that keep going if he drifts off again too soon, so he can’t even take advantage of the lingering drowsiness. 

It makes the night feel endless, and it isn’t helping that there’s no way to tell the time, black as it is down in the ship’s innards. Suddenly it makes sense, all the stories of captains pacing the deck of the ship all night. 

Fortunately, no one is present to witness his failure to disentangle himself from the hammock at all gracefully, though he wouldn’t be surprised if the quick series of thumps when he hits the floor startles dad.

 _Claudia_ sleeps like a rock no matter where you put her. Soren has only about a million memories of finding her passed out on a hard wooden chair, or under a tree, or in a haystack, often with noise aplenty all around, usually with a book draped somewhere on her person. 

_She’s_ probably doing fine.

Checkerboard light from the full moon spills down the hatch, and the ladder-steps up to the main deck make a strangely familiar _tok_ noise beneath his feet. 

_Crocus Moon,_ Soren recalls. Manawa has a much more interesting name for it than Katolis’ _Third Moon._ Crocuses bloom a lot later back home, and more sparsely, not like Manawa’s riot of purple-and-orange ground cover, lighting up the forest floor in clusters to call out the coming spring. 

It’s weird, that he’s actually a little homesick for it after hardly a day gone. He wouldn’t have thought he could get so attached to a place like that, and it leaves him feeling heavy in the limbs, hoping he’ll see it again. He _has_ to. _They all_ have to. He promised Yamina and Jowan he’d come back when it was safe in the west, so they could return to Duren, though he wonders now if they’ll want to by then.

At first, the smokeshades made him a little uneasy, but now it’s actually reassuring to watch them peacefully go about their business, heedless of the hour. Aaravos, just as wakeful as the ghosts, stands barefoot and stock still at the bow, hands clasped behind him, face upturned away from the brightness of the moon where it hangs over the stern. 

Everything about him seems to defy disturbance, so Soren doesn’t disturb him, instead climbing the port-side stair to the quarterdeck. 

“There you are,” Soren says to Raum, who jumps like he’s been splashed with cold water. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to, uh... You seasick or something?”

Raum shakes his head briefly. “A little, at first. I’m fine now. I chewed some of that ginger they gave us.”

Soren joins him at the back rail. The moon’s reflection makes a glittering streak on a surface of black water, so calm it looks almost like a white road, leading off into the distance to who-knows-where. It’s dreamy in a good way, erasing the nightmares handily.

Raum gestures out to it all. “I read that the Moon and the Ocean sources amplify each other. I thought, if there were ever a time I could--”

“This again.”

“Yes, Soren,” Raum answers, not hiding the edge. “This again.”

“You don’t have to. I keep telling you, you don't have to”

“Don’t I? What about when we were in the woods, outside those ruins, and that whole mess, and how _useful_ I could have been.”

“It turned out fine, though, didn’t it?” Soren’s not sure why he feels like he’s defending.

“But it has to be in here, somewhere, doesn’t it?” He sounds faintly manic. “Even if it’s weak, or incomplete, or dormant, or something. There has to be _something_ useful in all this, doesn’t there?”

Soren shrugs. He can’t meet Raum’s eyes. “Does there?”

Raum leans on the rail, the meat of his hand pressed against the wood, curls falling forward to veil his face. 

“I trust _you,_ Soren. I do. Just, I wasn’t raised to let other people carry my share of the weight, not ever. I owe you all so much already, you especially.”

“You don’t owe me anything.” Soren would rather have kept _a little_ of the heartbreak out of his voice there, but no dice.

“And still, what about when _they_ find out?” He jerks his head backward, toward the rest of the ship. “Because they will.”

“I didn’t find out until you told me. And they’re fine with Aaravos.”

“If I'm honest, I do think they'd get over it.” Raum sighs. “That's not the only reason, though. Sometimes I worry that I ruined it. Like it _was_ there, and then I messed up, and now it’s broken, or gone, or something. It’d be nice to know that’s not true, that I didn't burn my whole bridge to myself.”

“What, like magic is stored in the left arm?” Soren scoffs, and is relieved when Raum actually coughs a little laugh along with him. “So what’s stopping you? If you really do have some kind of… moon… thing.”

Raum tilts his head and brushes his hair out of the way, and Soren is struck by the way the pale light only throws his _warmth_ into sharp relief, the bronze of his face and neck, the amber of his eyes. 

“If it’s me,” Soren stammers, suddenly remembering, “then, you know, don’--I was joking, when I said I hated the moon, or whatever. It was just a joke. I had some bad experiences with moths. You know how it is.”

Raum laughs hard enough this time his teeth show. “It’s not that.”

“I guess I would think… I mean, I don’t know anything about magic, but I’ve heard elves talking about reality, and stuff, right?”

“I’ve been trying to work through all that. Real and not real. How, if you have a frightening dream, the monster isn’t real, but when you wake up with your heart pounding, _that’s_ still real, that feeling. Or, color. If I say that your… your eyes are blue,” Raum suggests, making slightly dizzying eye-contact, “I have no way to know I’m seeing the same thing you do, in the mirror, because we have the same word for it, so we think it’s the same, and that _makes_ it the same, in a way.”

“Everything you’ve had to deal with,” Soren comments, the words tumbling carelessly out, “I’d think you’d be an expert on appearances, and everything.”

Raum straightens up abruptly. “That’s it.”

“What’s it?”

“Soren, that’s… You asked what’s stopping me. ”

“Yeah?” Soren’s not sure he follows, but he’s glad Raum seems to have figured something out.

“And you said I would know about appearances. What if _that’s_ the problem? Like a spy who’s too far undercover.”

“I don’t get it.”

“The closest I ever got was after I told you. You saw me, knowing everything, both _sides,_ and it was fine. You weren’t scared, or suspicious, or pitying, I didn’t have to hide anything or worry about anything, you just--” Raum stops and smiles at the memory. “All you cared about was whether I was in pain. After that, I went out in the full moon for the first time in _years,_ and I _swear_ I felt something.”

 _“That’s_ why you’ve been trying,” Soren understands, awash in guilt over being annoyed by this monthly endeavor in the first place, given he was apparently the one that spurred all this on. “Well? I’m here. I see you now. Does that help?”

What compels Soren, he can’t say, but when Raum turns back to the face of the full moon, he puts his hand on Raum’s shoulder, the left one.

Raum looks _away_ from the moon, at Soren, and only then (and it’s so brief Soren’s not sure he doesn’t imagine it) he _flickers._

* * *

“Ylai!” 

It’s a warm greeting, but sour to Ylai’s ear, representing his failure. He’s always known he could never best his older brother in wisdom, so he focuses all he has on physical prowess, and still his efforts remain insufficient. Even here, surrounded by dead stone so he cannot hear the whispers of the branches, Nafai _still_ detected him.

«Your door sits open, Nafai-Prior,» Ylai points out in their shared native tongue. It’s understandable, probably an artifact of homesickness. It is strange, the way humans lock themselves in rooms like prison cells. Still, he worries. «Is it safe?»

Nafai laughs. «Let the Moonshadows believe themselves the epitome of stealth, if they like. Obsessed with sight and sound, not one bothers to conceal their smell, or the flow of energy around their body. I am not concerned.»

«Narampu has at times evaded my notice.»

«This place is essentially a cave,» Nafai sneers. «How sad would it be were she _unable_ to blend with it? No wonder her kind get on with humans, they like the same homes. Have you news of her movements?»

«She sees my surveillance, yet has only grown more brazen in ways. She communicates with someone far from here.»

«Ah,» Nafai smiles. «Then you needn’t worry too much. The Rootfolk are far, and so few remain. Perhaps in the end, Queen Scyntyllah can be persuaded to give them a few humans as thralls, or pets, or whatever they do with them. They pose little danger. As long as you keep her from the Poisoned Prince, all is well.»

«Is he responding to your teachings?» 

Nafai purses his lips and perches on the bay window, resting his antlers against the glass. «He has become more difficult to read of late. It seems likely this entire errand will come to naught, but look how many Moonshadows have been lured to the west! Our job is hardly begun, and already half done.»

Ylai merely nods his agreement. 

«Speaking of which,» Nafai says, rising to his feet and heading for the door, arranging the layers of the robes that mark him as an academic, «We shouldn’t keep Minister Runaan waiting.»

Ylai walks a half step behind and to the right of his brother, habit and training keeping their footfalls synchronized.

“Enter!” The minister’s voice passes through the wooden door, and his guard introduces them. When it closes again behind them, almost all the sound in the room seems swallowed by the finery. “What’s this I hear of a holiday?”

He only gets up after he’s started speaking, coming around his desk.

“Sir,” Nafai bows in the Branchfolk way, and Ylai follows. The bow is not returned except by a cool stare. “Our family has requested that one son return to the Eranenwood for a fortnight. Our aunt is ill and prepares for her return to the soil, and she has no children of her own for the attendant traditions.”

“Only one of you?”

“Only one is required. I wished to leave it to you, with your broader perspective, which of our aims can be halted for this brief period.”

Ylai keeps his silence. There is no ill aunt, and they both already know who Runaan will choose. A Moonshadow ought to see an illusion when he is in the midst of it, but he shows no sign.

“I mean no disrespect to your profession,” Runaan prefaces, “but the monitoring of the child is paramount, especially given the… concerns, with his other crownguard. We must keep Ylai here. At any rate, if your people are anything like mine, they would prefer the eldest anyway.”

“Indeed, sir,” Nafai agrees.

“Nafai, you are dismissed. Ylai, remain with me.”

Remain? Panic rises in Ylai’s throat as Nafai bows and exits, sparing only a brief glance for Ylai. He had expected to be sent back to work, not left alone with the Minister of Justice. Is he suspected of being in league with whatever nonsense Narampu is up to? Or of withholding information about her? 

Were it a fight, he likes his chances, despite being up against a former assassin, but any conflict with Runaan now is more likely to be one of words. Ylai lacks those, in the common tongue, even if he has no doubts of his own innocence.

At any rate, innocence is hardly any guarantee these days. Even being Xadian is not a perfect defense. Despite his distaste for Narampu, it gives him great anxiety to watch his dubious comrade narrowly skirt danger, protected by little more than her charge’s intense attachment to her. He can’t imagine the situation she’d be in, if not for how Ezran might respond to losing her.

Runaan merely waits until Nafai’s footsteps in the hall at last go quiet. 

“Sit,” invites Runaan, gesturing to a sofa and coming to a tense rest in his own high-backed chair. “Do you like _lunafol_ infusion?”

“I do, sir.” Ylai adjusts the lengthiest of his scabbards to allow him to sit. 

Between them, on a small round table, Runaan pours a translucent, reddish liquid from a warm carafe into two small cups. The smell reaches Ylai of new shoots and berries. How it is so fresh despite its long journey from Xadia, Ylai cannot guess. 

“You remind me of myself,” he says, his usually-downturned mouth flattening into a wistful smile. “When I was younger.”

“Sir?”

He sets down his cup. “You and your brother needn’t keep secrets from me.”

“I am afraid I do not know your meaning.” Truthfully, Ylai’s command of the common speech is much improved in the time he’s spent in Katolis, but he has taken pains not to change too much. If people think he is often confused, all the better.

“Our people have always had much in common,” Runaan muses. “In our case, yours and mine, I have one item to add: The fate of the Borderwoods.”

Ylai opens his mouth to speak, though he isn’t even sure what to say. He’s relieved when Runaan waves a hand to stop him. 

“I am not naive to what binds us. When the abomination is at last cleansed from the world and the humans content under dragon rule, what then? Old grievances, set aside long ago in the halving, _will_ rise once more. I’m certain of it. In your eyes, I see you already prepare. Your loyalty will force you to treat this as some sort of test you must pass through denial, so I hope that by not pressing you to respond, I can earn your trust.”

Ylai nods. When he takes a sip of his tea, he means it as a demonstration of acceptance, of hesitant belief.

“Have you seen what’s become of the High Mirror?” The fire burns low in the fireplace, reflected in Runaan’s eyes. In response to the soft shake of Ylai’s head, Runaan goes on. “The humans call the land _Cursed._ My heart aches for it _._ Some of my most beloved are entrenched, unwilling to leave the Silvergrove for anything short of a dragon’s command. I have offered them incentive, but they remain nonetheless. If they could just _see it,_ they would understand better _why_ I am here.”

“We all serve, when we are called,” Ylai says, speaking of Queen Scyntyllah. One does not resist being pressed into the service of a dragon of the hierarchy, alignment notwithstanding.

“Of course,” Runaan agrees hurriedly. Pink creeps up his cheeks, and he flexes his left hand. “But perhaps it was _destiny_ that the call was _here,_ so near to the earthly face of the moon itself. I would see it restored to its glory, to its people. I have been in contact with King Xankar of Lux Aurea. He is eager to see the Moonhenge reconstructed as well, so that he might at last have closure regarding the fate of his sister. His contribution will be appreciated, but it will not be enough.”

“About your sacred land, I am sorry,” Ylai gathers the words to say. “I hope it is restored also. However, I do not understand why you say all this to me.”

“The Moon Nexus needs Moonshadow hands. A complement of soldiers to stake out and defend our chosen border, artisans for reconstruction, mages to coax the magic from the shimmering lands inside it to countervail the western barrenness.” Something of cunning and conspiracy rises around Runaan’s eyes and the corners of his lips. “Of course, I cannot _do_ this as long as my kin have no cause to desire change.”

Runaan stands, and Ylai follows the movement back toward the door. He looks down as Runaan gathers their hands together.

“Sir?”

“This mission,” Runaan looks at the room around him as though it is emblematic of what they are all here to do, to cleanse humanity and make it worthy of a united Xadia, “has taken many of the best defenders from the settlements, so cruelty should not be required. I need my people alive and hale enough to work. Be gentle with them when you drive them to me, and you will have no foe in any under my command, Moonshadow and Sunfire alike.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Then you are released to your duties, crownguard.”

“Yes, sir.”

* * *

On the third night, Aaravos pads barefoot again to the bow. The humans have sequestered themselves in their berths, and he is alone with the stars. The wind surprises him, strong enough to free wisps of his hair from the leather strap he’s used to tie it back, quite contrary to the almanac’s prediction. If anything, he’d been concerned there would not be _enough_ wind and they’d wind up drifting. 

He nearly risks the drawing of a far-sight rune, to look in the direction of the gust, but perhaps he shouldn’t expend more strength than he has to.

Shortly before dawn, there are footsteps. No need to turn to know they’re Viren’s. As always, the connection goes both ways. Viren must feel Aaravos’ awareness, because he dispenses with pleasantries. 

“If you thought the ship needed a figurehead, we could probably have built one,” he says.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Aaravos answers placidly.

“You haven’t slept since you came back. Why?”

“You should know better than to ask questions you don’t want the answer to.” 

“There is no such thing,” counters Viren. 

“Very well.” He turns his attention from the stars and sea to Viren, charmingly rumpled and favoring one leg. “Do you remember what I told you Ziard said to me, before we left Anguli?”

He’s been seeing Ziard sometimes, since the Star Nexus. Or perhaps _seeing_ isn’t the right word, but rather getting a sense that he’s nearby, just out of sight. It’s soothing and painful all at once, and it makes him wonder why it’s happening _now,_ and why it feels different from the many times he conjured visions and illusions in his cell to pass the time.

 _I don’t know why, but it feels as though I’m leaving here for good, that I won’t see this place again._ The words echo in Aaravos’ mind. How much of that makes it across their link, he isn’t sure, but it might be enough to twig the right memory.

“I remember,” Viren says.

“Do _you_ feel it?” 

“Not for myself,” Viren says of the echo reaching him. “I thought you said you were blind to the future?” 

“I am.”

“Then, that sounds like perfectly normal paranoia.”

“Ah, good advice, coming from an expert on the topic.”

Viren just sighs, deeply, on a breath that goes all the way into his stomach so as to express the _entire range_ of his exasperation. 

“The next time I sleep,” Aaravos explains, “I will not wake.”

“Ex _cuse_ me? Were you planning to _tell_ anyone, or were we all simply supposed to read your mind?” 

“It isn’t important.” After a long pause, he adds: “Yet.”

Each time Aaravos has slept since he emerged from the cocoon has been _interesting,_ to say the least. Every hour he remains asleep, the glue with which he’s adhered himself to this form seems to weaken, and every time he _falls_ asleep, the process happens quicker and quicker. When he slept atop the Skywing’s ambler, he was nearly torn from his vessel entirely.

Opening the aperture between this and his prison to let a bit more of himself through has done _wonders_ for his magical capability and connection to the Stars, it’s just a pity that it’s also made him feel like he’s clinging to the inside of his body for dear life, and he has to _use_ most of that potential on keeping himself comfortably awake so that it doesn’t all fall apart. 

At times, he can almost smell the nothing-scent of his cell, feel the heat of the fire on the soles of his feet. The clear nights help.

Viren takes it fairly well, once he gets over the shock. 

“Have I ever deliberately kept something from you, once it was truly relevant? I will have to return to my prison to escape it when the time comes, making _this_ little more than a temporary inconvenience.” 

“Not that I don’t arguably owe you a jailbreak, but I’d _appreciate it_ if you wouldn’t collapse before giving clearer instructions on my role in it,” Viren grumbles.

“Once you enter the Moon Nexus, the rest should take care of itself.”

“So you claim.”

They stand at the bow for a short while, both weighed down by their own concerns. Blood magic is useful in _so_ many ways. Aaravos had had a plan for _this_ from the beginning -- once Viren had the power he sought, they could have used that connection to both find the confinement and shatter it to pieces. Things didn’t quite go the way he’d imagined, but the detour has finally started to make some kind of sense. Freedom is so close, Aaravos can almost taste it on the air. 

_He will regret ever having crossed you. They all will,_ Aaravos promises his imaginary Ziard.

Wait. 

There _is_ a taste on the air, a real one.

“Viren,” Aaravos pulls him from his own thoughts. “Do you smell that?”

“No?”

“Lightning.”

“What? The sky’s clear for--wait.”

"Precisely my thought."

They both spot it at about the same time, a subtle enough disruption to the view it could easily go unnoticed, but once they see it, there’s no pretending it isn’t there. If the slowly-brightening world is a painting, then someone has thumbed a blurry gray smudge over a section to the northwest, bordered above by a broad, flat cap of cloud, its blue fingers grasping toward them.

A storm.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly deeper cut on the headcanon about clerics in TDP: When questioned, Ehasz fumbled to describe what Opeli actually does, beyond keeping traditions and conducting official ceremonies. It reminded me of what a lot of religious officials are like where I live, and how people respond to them or would describe their activities (a few follow their traditions, the vast majority ignore them most of the time, but they're a cultural artifact that has widespread affection regardless.)
> 
> I have decided that right after the exile, clerics were a big deal, placing themselves in opposition to dark mages and basically considering them at fault for everything, and engaging in almost cargo-cult-like nature worship, imagining that if they behaved like the elves, and didn't do dark magic they could be allowed back into Xadia, or given assistance by elves/dragons, but they had to prove they were changed from the ways of Elarion. 
> 
> For a brief time, things were pretty intense with their leadership, and their ideas grew some odd tendrils of their own unrelated to their origins, but by the time the mage wars (as referenced at Comic Con 2019) were in full swing, people had pretty much left them behind, fixated as they were on gaining power to defeat other factions, and dark magic being a big part of that. 
> 
> The clerics themselves (all women, a reflection of their impression of nature as feminine) now mostly buy their own product, but largely not that intensely. It's considered a pleasant occupation for a young woman. A few are more passionate, like Opeli here.
> 
> No one else really pays them much mind, even if they enjoy the aesthetic and find them a nice part of their culture. There's no dogma and people don't follow them, or generally engage with them much outside of tourism to their temples/cloisters, or for ceremonial roles in major life events like births, marriages, deaths, (coronations) etc., though there is an impression that they are calm and wise, a thing that is sometimes true and sometimes not.
> 
> Other business:
> 
> If you have not yet read my fic, [Golden Repair,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23558911) I recommend it before the next chapter. It's not completely necessary but will definitely help.
> 
> Last New Year's I made a goal to write 250,000 words this year. I didn't quite hit it, but I got close at 227,870. For 20-frickin-20 I think that's not half bad.
> 
> Having this holodeck to play in really has kept me sane this year. The last few weeks completely buried in work and patients and things, it was like my brain was leaking out my ears, and then I finally got to go here again and it was like therapy. I can't _wait_ to write the next chapter, it's one I've been looking forward to for a loooong time!!!!!
> 
> Happy New Year!


	24. Book Six: Ocean | Chapter Four: Longshore Drift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it.”_   
>  **― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are following an email link, please make sure you're on the right chapter. These two got twined together in the writing, so I just rolled with it, and this is a two-chapter update. 
> 
> Again, if you have not read [Golden Repair](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23558911), definitely recommend you do that first.

**Book Six: Ocean**

**Chapter 4: Longshore Drift**

Ginger might work for dad, and for Raum, but that’s easy for them to say: they both _like_ the taste. Claudia can’t bear it, so instead, she strikes a bargain with the universe: give up one bodily fluid in exchange for keeping another where it is.

She rolls her sleeve methodically, so it won’t slip down again, and makes a clean cut through the blonde hairs on the back of her arm. Blood slips against gravity, teased into the air, globules the same color as the stone in her staff. With a twist, they become a stomach-settling spell that would usually require the clarh-preserved trachea of a flightless coaldove. 

Not a lot of those at sea.

There was a brief phase, when Claudia was little, where she’d get nauseated every time she got nervous. Mom used this exact spell to soothe her. The feeling of the fist around her stomach relaxes, and it’s nostalgic -- not as much as if it had been done _for_ her -- but it calls mom comfortingly to mind, anyway.

In the end, her seasickness has been _persistent._ This is the third repetition of the spell, leaving her arm looking like she had a run-in with an angry shadowpaw, but she’s perfectly comfortable aside from that. Will this keep happening now? Situations where the least worst option is to draw her own blood? If it does, how long will it be before she’s scarred in a whole different way to her parents?

On the one hand, it’s good she’s adjusting as the boat pitches and rolls and the rain _thupps_ on the wood like little fingers on the skin of a drum. On the other hand, it feels distinctly unfair, because she hasn’t gotten a chance to _enjoy_ what _seemed_ like it would be kind of exciting. No, it’s not exactly a recreational voyage, but that doesn’t mean she’s not grumpy about how she’s finally getting her sea legs and now the weather’s turned foul. 

“Knock knock,” Soren says out loud in the doorless entry. He looks at her bandaged arm where it dangles from the upper hammock and scrunches his nose at the little spot of blood seeping through. “I was going to ask if you’re feeling any better, but I guess you found a way.”

“I always do,” she says, head upside-down so he’s walking on the ceiling. The wind hisses and whistles outside.

He climbs socially into the hammock opposite, clinging like a sloth at first before he finds his balance. “How come you’re using the top one? What's wrong with the others?”

“I slept in that one on the first night,” she points at the bottom left hammock, and then at the one directly below her. “And that one the second night. Is that weird?”

“I dunno, a little?” He shrugs. “You can do what you want. Hey, can I ask you something without you making fun of me?”

She blows a skeptical raspberry through her lips. “Doubt it, but go ahead.”

“What’s a syllable?” Soren is undaunted by the potential mocking, and by the ship as it lists heavily. Something clatters above, but it sounds too solid to be a person. “I mean, like, the real… what’s _really_ a syllable?”

Claudia props herself up, elbow on her pillow for stability as the room returns upright, and looks over at him, his hands clasped on his leather cuirass. He seems mostly unbothered by the sway. She narrows her eyes. “What do you mean ‘ _really?’_ Why?”

“Wanted to make a haiku,” he says quickly. He bonks his fingers against the ceiling when he gestures. “I know, okay? But no one’s ever actually explained it in a way that made sense, anytime I get it it seems like a lucky guess, and if I’m going to actually get anywhere with the poetry thing--”

“I didn’t think you were serious about that.”

“Maybe? I don’t know. I’m keeping my options open.”

“Well,” she considers, “I guess I think of it kind of like the beat in music, but in words. Sometimes there’s the same number of syllables as vowels, but not always. Like if they go together, or if you don’t say them out loud. Er--try not to think about the spelling, but the sound.”

“Vowels. Beats. Okay. So--” Soren raps his fist on the ceiling. “--Clau-di-a, because the first part sounds like one thing.”

“Yeah. So I’ll start:” She thinks for a moment, counting gently with a wiggle of one finger at a time once, and then twice, and then once she’s got it, she counts off: “Sail-ing-makes-me-sick.”

“But-mag-ic-” Soren stops, wiggles his ring finger and pinky, and then settles on, “helps you!”

“Almost. Middle’s seven.”

Soren counts, dismisses something he doesn’t say, and then taps the ceiling with one finger at a time to: “Ma-gic-makes-you-feel-bet-ter!”

Claudia answers, “Ma-gic-with-no-name! We did it!”

“Wait, what? What do you mean, _no name?”_ Soren braces himself against the ceiling and Claudia puts out her hand to limit how close she can get to the wall as the ship tilts her way again. 

“Hm, I guess that’s not exactly right. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about. _Dark magic_ is fine when it’s us, but if we get through this, if we win, what _do_ we call it? Xadia made it up to make us sound evil. And yeah, the stuff I learned on Manawa _will_ change things for the better, but if we don’t do it all their way, can we really call it the same thing? Maybe I’m being picky, but that doesn’t seem like proper classification. What if people want to learn their way? They’d need to differentiate, somehow.”

She’d never have known how being willingly given makes components more powerful, or how picking _half_ the flowers in an area and sprinkling dried woodleaf on the rest as they wilt makes _more_ grow back the next time, and that’s just a tiny example. _Core magic_ calls it an exchange. You take something, you give back. 

Claudia sees that it works, in fact it works so well she thinks she might be able to maintain magical soil even in the west as it is now if she could get her hands on some to start with, but she still wants to know more about _why_ it works. 

The story is good for remembering what to do, but it’s not enough, not for her. It always feels like there’s unknown just up ahead, another door like the one on the island, and no matter how many she unlocks, there’s another one leading to understanding _more._

“You and dad taught them some stuff too, right?” Soren points out.

“Exactly. And our source is bigger than the others, anyway. It deserves sub-categories. Anyway, it’s not like this is a new problem. It’s had a bunch of names. In Kannati they called it _human magic,_ which is fine I guess, but seems kind of limiting. Aaravos said it used to be _Os magic,_ which is kind of cool, but that’s draconic too, so that’s out.”

“I thought you said you’d figure this out in six months. That was more than a year ago.”

“I know!” She covers her face with her hands.

“It’s weird, don’t you think?” Soren says. “I mean, the other sources, you can just look at them, and you know what they are. The ocean is just the ocean. You look at the sun, you know it’s the sun.”

“And then you go blind.” Claudia jokes dryly, underlined by a particularly pained moan from the ship and a roll of thunder.

“You know what I mean. The Sunfire elves have pictures of the sun all over their stuff. Moonshadow elves have the phases of the moon. But you guys all have snakes and crows and stuff, and on Manawa, their whole thing was…”

“Mushrooms. Yeah. It’s always a step removed.”

They listen to the rain and the crack of lightning in companionable silence for a moment. If _she_ can’t verbalize it, Soren isn’t likely to. As much as she jokes sometimes, she knows _that’s_ the hangup. It’s not that he doesn’t understand, or care, it just takes him time and concerted effort to select the right words and get them out of his mouth. He feels stuff, he acts on it, and when he tries to talk about it, he picks things like _weep-ridden._

Fortunately, they speak their own sibling language to some extent. Even when her words get tied in recursive knots, Soren usually manages to pick up the essence, if not always the particulars.

“Maybe what you need isn’t a new name, but a new angle!” Soren says, as though he’s come up with something brilliant. 

“Huh?”

“I mean, what’s so bad about the dark? Sure, it can be scary if you don’t know what’s in it, but you need the dark to sleep, right? And if there was no darkness, where would we store potatoes?”

“Potatoes,” Claudia repeats, trying to make sense of it. 

“Yeah! I mean, right?”

He’s not _wrong_ exactly, even if it’s not the smoothest way of putting it. There’s something to it, the idea of understanding what’s in the dark taking away its creepiness. Maybe even _elves_ wouldn’t hate it so much, if they understood it better, or if they saw some benefit from it. Rootfolk understood, once. Maybe it’s not as lost a cause as it seems. 

“You know that’s actually some solid lateral thinking,” Claudia admits, sinking deeper into the hammock “I guess I’m putting the cart before the horse. Even getting that barrier down is the first step of a million steps, and this is like, a million and one. Who knows if we’ll even survive trying.”

“Yeah,” Soren says, suddenly distant.

Claudia singsongs: _“I know what you’re thinking abouuut.”_

“Hey!” He snaps back.

“I mean, it’s not like you’re doing anything to _hide_ it. At all.”

“That’s…” Soren cranes his neck. Last either of them saw him, Raum was on the deck watching the shades and worrying about the storm. If it gets bad enough, the covered space with the tiller won’t do, they’ll all have to come down here anyway. Claudia didn’t see the point. Soren decides the distance is sufficient and drops to a hush. “That’s just it. You say I’m _soooo obvious,_ well if that’s true and he still hasn’t said anything, maybe he doesn’t _want_ to say anything.”

It’s funny, how being at sea is a kind of personality vacuum in which everyone’s natural tendencies pop harshly to the surface. Aaravos acts mysterious, dad broods, and Soren and Raum do _their_ whole dumb routine, round and round, taking turns being reticent and thick-headed.

She’d been so sure they’d sort things out once they got settled on Manawa. Should have known better. One boy is stupid enough, get two of them and they’re impossible.

“Bet you anything if _his_ sister were here he’d be saying the same thing to her,” Claudia grumbles. “And she’d be saying: sometimes you have to stop _peering over the edge_ and take a leap of faith.”

“Get that from one of your books?” Soren snipes. “Weren’t you just saying you didn’t think you… Like people, like that, or whatever?”

“I _said_ I think I like reading about it more than getting involved. If anything, it makes me more qualified. I’m objective. Although I admit, he’s pretty hard to read sometimes.”

“Bad as Aaravos,” Soren grumbles. 

Claudia giggles right through Soren hushing her. At least _Aaravos_ goes around like some storybook trickster the way he’ll answer almost anything so long as you word the question right. Raum acts like every word he says costs him money, except with--

Hang on… _bad-as-aa-ra-vos._

She taps on the ceiling as she says, “Un-less-he’s-talk-ing-to-you!”

“Clau-di-a-shut--ack!”

Soren is interrupted by the ship, groaning out its own poetry as it lists _hard._

Claudia tips and rolls and smacks into the wall. Her foot catches in the material and tears it down with her. Fortunately it’s a short trip to the ground and the slant means her shoulder smacks into wood before her head does. Small mercies, especially given she’s tangled in canvas. 

The noise hurts more than the fall. The whole wooden frame _screams._ One enormous _crack,_ and then another. Lightning?

The world explodes again with noise. Thunder from everywhere, from _inside_ the berth. Claudia’s never heard anything so loud. Her eyes squint shut of their own accord as she curls up and covers her head. Twin ear-splitting booms, and after, only a high squeal.

Soren’s over her, hands against the wall, shielding her from falling wood. There’s still a wall for him _to_ touch, so things can’t be as bad as they sounded at first. On the other hand, what was a _draft_ in here before is now a _gust_ \-- not the best sign.

The ceiling is ripped half-apart, a wild gash above where Claudia was resting moments before. The gray sky, seemingly too dark for the midday hour, churns viciously above.

He’s frowning down at her, face in shadow, a fractured panel of wood resting over his shoulders like a yoke. The ship swings back the other way, but unlike Claudia, half-frozen and scrabbling, Soren’s ready for it. He lets the plank slide off him and grabs it on the way down, swinging it into a lean against the far corner. He braces his foot against the long-side of the triangle it makes with the wall and floor.

She sways, smacks into his legs, and slides no further.

Whatever he says, she can’t hear it. All is silent, except the high-pitch ring. She taps her ear and shakes her head, and the line between Soren’s eyebrows deepens.

In the time between one lurch of the ship and the next, she wiggles out of the hammock material like a snake shedding an old skin, but she has to wait through the next swing to try and get to her feet (with Soren’s help.)

The faintest sounds start to come back to her as they step out of the berth, crashing, rolling, and scraping. Even that’s a relief, at least she’s hearing _something._

The sea is pummeling them, but that doesn’t account for half of it. Dad’s down the hatch, with Raum right behind him (blood soaking through the pale fabric of his trousers around the shin) and Aaravos last through. Raum shouts something, pointing above. Claudia only catches a word or two, squinting at his lips and wondering how General Amaya _does_ this. 

Soren gestures at Raum’s leg, but Raum waves dismissively.

“Can you hear?” Soren’s voice is right next to her ear. 

“A little!” She shouts, or thinks she shouts. It’s hard to tell. “Getting better!”

“We lost the masts!” Soren enunciates.

“Both?”

He nods.

No wonder there’s damage, they might as well have been hit by two falling trees. Claudia hardly needs to be an expert sailor to know that without the masts, they might as well be a bath toy. Everyone stumbles backward with the next heave of the ship, then forward again. Something thunks against the hull like it’s knocking on a giant door. 

“I thought those shades knew how to sail!?” She hollers over the wind. “What are they doing?”

“They were trying to separate the masts from the ship.” Dad still sounds far away, but understandable, which is good enough. “They freed one, but the other is still attached by the rigging. The tools went overboard.”

That must account for the knocking and shaking, the movement of the water slamming the fallen mast against them. Damn. Shades aren’t exactly known for their improvisational skills, either. With animals it hardly matters, but anything more intelligent tends to need its memory jogged with familiar items. They’ll be as lost as anyone, now.

“Look how we’re getting thrown!” Soren demands, arms out so he can hold the two sides of the narrow hallway. “We can hardly stand _here,_ you can’t go back up there!” 

“You heard that hit,” Raum argues, “if we don’t cut that thing loose, it could sink us. We don’t have a choice. Give me your knife!”

“You must be joking!”

“Oh for the love of--” Claudia rolls her eyes. “Aaravos. I know you’re still limited on magic but is there anything you can do, Star spells that would cut the ropes?”

He bristles momentarily, but then his lips tighten in a suppressed smile. “Not cut, but _rot,_ yes.”

“Great. You _three_ are on rope-cutting duty, all of you. Iberrine’s cousin gave us a skywyrm flight bladder, and I found some alyagull feathers last night. There’s nothing we can do about the movement of the ship, but Dad and I can use those to protect you from the wind. Right, dad?”

He nods, suddenly mute.

“Everybody good?” Claudia asks of the four sets of eyes on her. 

Nods all around. 

The ship cants to one side. Everyone braces except Claudia, who trips down the slant into the narrow darkness of her father’s berth. It’s a lucky break that the sackful of components has spilled its contents across the floor but the containers are intact. 

On the deck, the scene is hard to adjust to. How can it be real? The mainmast is the one in the water, flung around on every tide, but the foremast seems to have fallen backward, crushing and splintering a huge section of quarterdeck, snapping the tiller off at the root. It lies dead in the hole it’s made and covers much of the rear half of the ship in whipping, twisted sail. The remnants of the two masts stab into the air like stakes driven through a body.

Everyone gets utterly soaked in seconds, but the bubble of still-air projected from where Viren and Claudia perch, half-out of the hatch and grasping tight to the ladder-steps, does its job and then some. The wind is not able to complicate the mission.

Raum and Soren crawl across the deck on hands and knees to avoid falling or sliding when the floor beneath them tips. Aaravos stays upright with some kind of spell that must change his perception of time, as he reacts to the movement with uncanny speed. They have to navigate around the mess made by the fallen foremast, but in some places the clutter helps, providing something heavy to cling to as the ship is tossed.

The rigging is a tangled mess of a million ropes, but between Aaravos shredding them in tiny pockets of accelerated time, and Raum and Soren slicing at them, they give way, one by one, until the last one snaps and the sea carries the projectile off into the gray, a trophy of its victory.

Around the deck, shades mill in confusion, carrying bits of debris from one place to another like men who’ve entered a room and forgotten what they came for. Once the others are again safe below, Claudia shoots a baleful look at her father, who nods back in a blend of agreement and permission. She thanks the dark ghosts and dismisses them, letting them vanish into the wind.

Together in the only berth forward enough not to have suffered too badly from the fallen foremast, they wait in ankle-high seawater. Claudia’s just relieved when it doesn’t get any deeper.

At some point, when the worst seems to have passed, Aaravos opens a bottle of clarh (brought along with the components, for use in purification and processing for magic, but still entirely drinkable to whatever extent it ever was) and takes a deep pull. 

Without speaking, they pass it around. It tastes foul, and it burns on the way down, but it _does_ help to pass the time. How long it takes for the storm to finally pass is hard to say, but the dark of the storm turns to the dark of night before all is said and done.

“It appears,” Aaravos remarks as they emerge, “The water’s all come from above, none below. So, not all bad news.”

“We’re still seaworthy,” Viren confirms. 

“It would seem so.”

That and the fact that no one’s _too_ badly hurt is about the only good news they’ve got. No one has to say anything about the wreckage of the quarterdeck. No tiller and no sails means that even if they can float, there’s not much _else_ they can do. It might as well be a big raft for how much choice they have about where to go. If they’re lucky they’ll crash onto an unknown shore. If they’re unlucky, it’s out to an even-more-unknown sea.

The firebox is mercifully intact, the sand drenched, but that’s fine. The hard part is finding bits of wood among the remains dry enough to burn.

“I don’t get it,” Soren says, perched on the clay-brick edge to warm up and dry off, as if they’re camping on the sea. “It was supposed to be clear. The weather was fine.”

“I don’t believe that was an _ordinary_ storm,” Aaravos agrees. “It came _south_ to us, which means it passed across land. It shouldn’t have been so powerful by then.”

“Are you saying it was _magical?”_ Dad’s finally stopped shivering. 

“Perhaps. Intentional or not, I don’t know, but I have seen the wrath of Storm Dragons before. If I didn’t know Avizandum had perished, I’d wonder if someone didn’t upset him.”

Everyone sits up a little straighter at that. 

“Zubeia,” Soren says, breathless.

“What does that mean?” Raum wonders in Soren’s direction. “You met her, right?”

Soren grimaces. “I don’t know. I mean, she was all about the truce, but she also wanted the other stuff, too.”

“I didn’t realize dragons made such _politicians,”_ Viren murmurs, which gets a chuckle out of Aaravos.

“Who did you think invented it?” Aaravos agrees.

“You mean it wasn’t you?” 

“She seemed so calm,” Soren says, ignoring the banter. “The only thing I can think of that might get her _that_ upset is if something happened to Zym.”

It isn’t that Claudia’s not listening, exactly. She can do both -- listen, and think over her frustration. This whole thing is impossible. She wants to tell them _we should be careful,_ but careful of what? The complete unknown? It’s not as if they have a _real plan_ that can be changed in the first place, and acting the way they are, there’s no way anything will ever get done. If today was the dry run (so to speak) for a crisis, things don’t look good. 

Claudia can listen _and_ think. What she can’t do is manage her facial expression while she does it, and Soren looks at her with baffled concern. 

“Clauds? You okay?”

She leaps to her feet.

“Am I okay? _Am I okay?! You two_ can’t concentrate long enough to cut some ropes without more drama and theatrics than an entire acting troupe, and _you--”_ she spins around, finger jabbing at Aaravos, “play your cards so close to your chest you might as well shred them for how much useful information you let your own _allies_ have. I have to assume you get your jollies on us begging for it? And _you--”_ she turns on her father, hearing how shrill she sounds but past caring, “You _started_ all of this, but now it’s time to end it, and suddenly you’re acting like you think if you touch anything it’ll break. You lost, so what? Get over it! Either you’re _out of retirement_ or you’re not. Make up your mind.”

They all stare at her, gaping like fish. 

Tears warm the corners of her eyes. “I spent the last three days sleeping and trying not to throw up and then I could barely even hear and _I_ was the one who had to get us out of that. Do you not see how _screwed_ we are!?”

It’s stupid, storming off. It’s not as if there’s far to go. With the quarterdeck mostly destroyed and the berths flooded enough to be uncomfortable, she can't truly even get out of earshot without crossing into impracticality, so she has to hear them speaking softly, almost certainly about her. There’s even a quiet _laugh,_ though she can’t tell if it was Soren or dad. 

Like an idiot, she left her staff and satchel by the fire in her haste, so she _also_ can’t cast any spells that would keep the cold off.

When warmth comes, it’s in the form of a broad hand on her back.

“For what it’s worth,” says her father, “you’re right.”

She whirls around, practically throwing herself against his chest. He wraps his arms tight around her and _that_ dam, at least, breaks. The wool of his cloak muffles the sound of her crying into it, letting him hold her up as she sobs.

“I was so scared.”

“I know,” he says, words coming out on a sigh. “You did brilliantly, though. You always do, even when you shouldn’t have to. Maybe especially then.”

“Damn right.” Claudia steps back, sniffling, but laughing a little too.

“You know mother used to do that.”

“Do what?”

_“Whatever_ needed done, no matter how miserable or impossible, and then after she saved the day, and was in private she’d just obsessively trace the problem back to figure out who to be furious at for making her handle it at all.”

“How often was it you?”

“Often enough.”

“Well, _I get it.”_ Claudia takes the damp handkerchief he offers her and wipes her eyes. 

“We won’t be able to make progress until morning, come get a few hours sleep. Aaravos will keep watch.”

* * *

“Couldn’t have got one that _didn’t_ smell like mothballs?” Rayla wrinkles her nose watching Sigrin pull a cleric’s white-on-white brocade over her clothes. It’s odd to see her like that, most of her wardrobe being, if not always black, then easy enough to mistake for it in dim light.

“It was safer to take one from storage,” Narampu hisses. “What would you have preferred I do? Steal it right out of some cleric’s rooms?”

“Hush, both of you. If someone’s close enough to smell me, I’ll probably have other problems already. Remember: Information only, no heroics, no risks. The only way you take the thing is if you’re _absolutely certain_ you can get away with it, because failing--”

“Will make it a hundred times harder,” Rayla affirms her understanding. Runaan used to do this too, even just for training. Is there something about her face that says _I will forget the plan and do something stupid?_ “I know.”

“And it’s impossible enough as it is. You--” Sigrin nods to Rayla, “meet back at the Dusty Pigeon when you’re done.”

“How do you know _you_ won’t be the one who gets caught?” Rayla points out.

“I don’t. If I’m gone for twenty four hours, Hasima’s in charge, and she knows better than to do something foolish.” _Like a rescue,_ goes unsaid. 

They split there, Sigrin lifting the robes to hurry up the stairs into the castle proper for her part of this. Rayla follows Narampu around a corner and into a storage room with an opening into the more hidden passages of the castle.

“I could probably get you out,” Narampu says. “Worst case.”

“Much as I don’t doubt it, that seems a bit risky even for you,” Rayla points out. 

At first, when Callum reported no luck using his astral form to find the staff, Rayla was frustrated. She tried not to show it, but of course he knew, and his expression of shame haunts her and makes her all the more eager for this to go well. If it does, she can tell him he gave them exactly the clue they needed: two big, obvious possibilities, both of which he couldn’t enter as a phantom _and_ Narampu couldn’t sound with her powers -- the royal select armory, full of the rarest and most unique weapons in the kingdom, and the treasury. 

Sigrin knew right away when Rayla quoted his description _(like a brick wall cloaked in shadow)_ that dark magic was at work, a kind of warding Sigrin described as putting a peg in a hole so no other pegs can get in. No other pegs, that is, except the locator spell, which was in turn compared to rolling up a piece of paper and slipping it between the peg and the hole.

That’s for the treasury, anyway. There’s no back way in, no vents or drains, so the only way to know for sure is for Sigrin to make for the hallway on the other side of the wall and work her magic right through the stone. The armory, on the other hand, is more Rayla’s style: it’s full of vents and drains, to prevent the buildup of humidity or flooding.

Some of the passages are large enough to walk through, _meant_ for emergency use or sneaking around, but others are obviously storm overflow (or worse things Rayla would rather hold her breath and not think too hard about) and require turning to one side, or crawling along on hands and knees or even flat out, chest to the cold floor. 

“Suppose I see now why your horns are shaped like that.” Rayla says, in one of the tightest squeezes. 

“Like--”

“Straight back. For… clearance.” Rayla herself has smacked and scraped her own horns against the ceiling enough to rough up the tips pretty badly, which she’s going to have to deal with later if she doesn’t want them catching on things. 

It’s strange, thinking how things have changed so much so quickly that not only does she _live_ in a human city, but there’s even a place to buy horn-files and polishing chamois. 

“Thought that was obvious,” Narampu chuckles. “Don’t worry, we’re almost there. Just up ahead, that’s the grate.”

All Rayla can see is Narampu’s feet and rear end, but she turns out to be right. Once again, Rayla’s glad to have her here, as the iron drain catch isn’t bolted down, just sitting in its groove kept in place by its own weight. Narampu rolls onto her back beneath it and, braced against the passageway itself, pushes (with significant effort) to shift it out of the way. Not in a million years would Rayla call herself _weak,_ but she’s pretty sure she couldn’t have done _that_ on her own.

Narampu first, then Rayla, they heave themselves out of the opening and into the bottom of the armory. The space is the shape of a skinny barrel with five levels, the four mezzanines forming an inner ring edged with a spiral staircase that takes up much of the center.

“Uh. How far down _are_ we?” 

“This isn’t actually the _deepest_ part of the castle,” Narampu says, “but it’s close. The ceiling there’s just below the first floor. The main door’s on the second one down.”

Eugh. Rayla doesn’t mind being underground, but this is a _lot_ underground. She can almost feel all the layers of castle and earth above her, can imagine what would become of her if it collapsed, or flooded. Though, that’s what the drain’s for, right? Surely they built it not to do that?

A system is devised, for Narampu to go clockwise and Rayla anti-clockwise on each level. The bottom level is a dud, and so is the next.

“Lot of elf weapons here,” Rayla observes with open distaste. 

“What would you do, eh? You beat someone who’s got a cool sword, wouldn’t _you_ take it?”

“Where I come from, we don’t just have piles of blades lyin’ around. Most serious weapons are made special, for someone _specific._ There’s magic in that, in making something for someone, and them using it. It becomes part of them, and they become part of _it._ If a warrior dies, their weapon ought to be destroyed with them, melted down, or their spirit might get stuck and no’ be able to move on.” Concerned, Rayla adds: “Surprised this place isn’t haunted.”

“Hm. You still make another with the metal, though?”

“‘Course. Be a waste, otherwise.”

The third level has some odd tomes Rayla can’t read, which she imagines is for the best. There must be a reason they’re here and not in the library. Any number of staves, too, but not the one they’re looking for. One of the reasons she’s even here instead of leaving it to Narampu alone is that _she’d_ know the damn thing if she saw it, without a doubt. 

Just when they’ve finished checking the last two levels and started to head back down in defeat, hoping Sigrin’s doing better, they run out of whatever dregs of good fortune they’d been working from.

The thick, iron door on the fourth level swings open with a low whine. There’s nowhere to hide, the rails are too thin, the display cases are bolted to the walls. 

They both freeze as a Sunfire guard and a Moonshadow agent come tumbling in, giggling, looking behind them, hands tangled together, armor half-unbuckled. Of course, this _would_ be some secret-castle-canoodle spot, wouldn’t it? The Moonshadow elf spots them first, of course.

“Hey!” He shouts, sobering fast. “Who are--Crownguard Narampu!? Wait a second, is that--”

_Shit._ Yeah, Rayla recognizes him, too. Worse, as one of Skor’s cousins, she’s pretty sure he hated her already. 

“Do you know who that _is?”_ He’s talking to Narampu and his girl at the same time. _“She’s_ the one Minister Runaan was looking for! Get her!”

“What do you think I’m doing, eh? How ‘bout putting that tryst on hold and _helping me!”_ Narampu protests back, so convincing in her tone it’s actually _startling._ Without moving her lips, she says, “Hit me.”

“What?” Rayla objects.

“Make it look real.” Narampu slides a short crystal dagger out of a sheath at her belt. Loudly this time: “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I’m not going to let you hurt Ezran or the Minister!”

She pressures Rayla onto the steps and closer to the open drain. The only chance they have to both get out of here without being arrested or worse is if Narampu loses this fight, and _visibly._ So, with a tiny apologetic shrug and tip of her head, Rayla draws her blade. 

* * *

Morning brings further danger, because of course it does. It isn’t that Viren _expected_ the narrow rhombus-snout of an abyssal dragon to appear alongside them in the early light of morning, but in a way, he didn’t quite _not_ expect it either. After yesterday, things were always going to get worse somehow. It’s almost a relief to have the other shoe drop this way, shocking and acute, instead of someone’s wound infected, or a problem with provisions, the sort of concern that began festering as soon as the storm was past.

He’d call it out of the frying pan and into the fire, if they weren’t surrounded on all sides by freezing water.

Viren’s seen drawings of these things, but they’re all ancient, stylized, clearly sketched by artists from a description, or perhaps a description of a description. None of them even approach the real thing beyond the most base identifiability. 

The dragon’s head alone is nearly as long as the ship. The thin, snakelike curve of its body hovers beneath the surface, diaphanous fins rippling to stabilize it in the waves. The light plays on its scales so bits of it seem to appear and disappear, blending with the water.

Its horns, though, stand out, pale pink in color and spongy-rough. Fans of nubby branches extend backward, wide enough in angle to frame its body, if the thing were to tip back its head. From around the base of each horn and at the tip of the snout stream long white tendrils.

Fish like gold-and-silver coins crowd around in shimmering clusters, and something _else_ moves at the edge of what the water’s clarity lets show -- several somethings, close to humans in shape. Brinefolk, to be sure. They make swift vertical loops in the water, rising to catch peeks of the unfolding situation, and then vanishing into the deep again. 

The dragon’s lidless, bulging eyes roll to examine them all, standing at the rail, unsure how to proceed. Viren can tell Claudia’s running through spells in head, hand tight on her staff just below the stone. As badly as they’d both wished for that old primal stone yesterday, its loss is even deeper of a regret now.

“Humans?” 

The word is not spoken, not with lips or tongue. A noise does emanate from the dragon, that much is certain, but it’s not a word, it’s a warbling blend of yodel and yawn escaping through the teeth. There’s no growl or rumble to it at all, so unlike the sounds of land-based dragons. 

The _word_ plays inside Viren’s _head,_ in the dragon’s voice, squealing and lowing all at once. From everyone’s faces, he’s not the only one hearing it.

“Curious,” it says in the same manner, forked tongue still in its mouth, and for a brief moment the dragon’s curiosity is a mist in the air around them. It reminds Viren of the connection with Aaravos, but far more potent, more _noisy_.

It reaches its great nose so close they can see the valves in its nostrils open and close. The wave of curiosity is replaced with another, of disappointment, even _resignation_. “Ah, dark magic. And… something else. No matter.”

“Say nothing of me,” Aaravos murmurs from behind, his hood raised. He and dragons aren’t the best combination, so that was always Viren’s plan.

“No one wants to hurt you!” Viren shouts at the head as it draws backward, leaning over the rail to chase it. He has to do _something_ before this truly falls apart. “We’re off course, you can see the damage. We only want to reach the shore. We aren’t here to take anything, for magic or any other reason!”

If it hears him, it gives no sign. It shimmies backward with what might be a sigh, swirling markings along its sides glowing softly. Its belly when it rears up is speckled blue and white, like dried cornflower. 

With a kind of grim clarity, Viren understands why there are so few clear accounts of abyssal dragons. The atmosphere is surreal, at once terrifying and utterly mundane. The dragon is obviously leaking emotion in some way, but there’s no fury in it, no resentment, no hate or fight.

He sees himself as the dragon sees him: less an _enemy_ and more a rat trapped in a pantry, an inconvenient, mildly unpleasant thing, to be disposed of without ceremony. 

“Wait!” This voice speaks his language, clear and bright as a wind-chime.

The elf streaks through the water eerily quick, only controlling her ascent at the last second as she breaks the surface. The front of her body is the color of a pearl, but her back is dark gray. Her narrow, noseless face is further obscured by green-black hair clinging to her skin, and the effect makes her eyes (all black, even the sclera) look even larger than they already are. 

Her horns match her eyes, curling backward with rounded tips, shining like polished hematite. 

She waves to the dragon, which stops in its tracks with unexpected patience. Had it eyebrows, they might be raised. It lowers its head so its chin rests right on the surface. 

The elf places her palm on its nose. The messages coming off her are much more jagged than the dragon’s, but far more precise, a sharpened knife to the dragon’s blunt, crushing instrument. Not only feelings, there are _images,_ a waking dream that casts a wide psychic net.

_Lovemate--_ a familiar suntanned human man about Viren’s age with crinkly, hazel eyes-- _historyfriend--_ with an image of Viren as a boy, followed by an image of Viren and--

Enias. 

It all clicks into place. _This_ is the elf he saw with Enias in the mountains, years ago! Hope expands in his chest.

He turns in time to catch a flicker of confusion on Raum, but Aaravos has probably seen enough humans aging to make a guess, and Soren and Claudia can compare the vision to old portraits. If the elf can do this, he’s willing to guess she must have plucked these images from Enias’ own memory.

Thank goodness Enias cared to learn her language, such as it is.

The image flickers between the young, smiling version of him, and what he looks like now, old and tired to his own eye.

The sense of investigation makes the message clear: _He’s an old friend of my husband, let me talk to him._

After a pause in which no one breathes, the elf’s face takes on an expression of deep listening and contemplation. A private mental whisper from the dragon, perhaps? She puts her face into the water and makes a high-pitch call, and gets a distant chorus in response. When she looks to the dragon again, it nods its mighty head once, causing a wave that sends the mastless ship to bobbing violently enough to make everyone cling to the rail. 

Before they’ve recovered, it’s already slipped beneath the waves, deep enough to disappear, though Viren doubts it went far. 

“Whoa,” Claudia says.

“You can say that again,” Soren mumbles through his teeth. 

_“Whoa,”_ Claudia whispers, with an elbow to Soren’s arm, making them both snicker. 

At least they’ve kept a sense of humor amid all this.

“Viren!” It’s strange to hear the elf call his name. “May I come up?”

“I… um--” Viren struggles, flustered by her familiarity.

“C’mon aboard!” Soren calls in his place.

At her request, her friend traces a rune in the surface of the water, and a pillar draws up beneath her until she can tumble away from it onto the deck of the ship. Her fish-leather clothes are spare, resembling underwear closely enough to make Viren not sure where to politely let his gaze rest. Usually he’d settle on a person’s eyebrows in a situation like this, but she has none.

For a brief moment he would swear she has a tail rather than legs, but as she untangles her limbs, she unhooks two little spurs on her ankles, like tiny versions of her horns, and that’s that.

“Here,” Claudia extends a hand to help her up. 

She is much less graceful here than in the water, having to lift her knees like a boot camp cadet to account for the size and shape of her feet. 

“Humans are so lovely.” She turns to Viren. “I am sorry for the fright. Gymir is alright, but he’s quite protective of us. If it makes you feel any better, he isn’t much more hospitable to _anyone_ of the land. If he lacked the excuse of dark magic, he’d have found something else. I didn’t recognize you at first, you look so different to Enias’ memories, but your voice was unmistakable.”

It’s all slightly dizzying. Viren leans on a classic: “I’m... afraid you have me a disadvantage.”

She frowns, and he bristles as he _feels_ her rifle through his mind for the meaning of the phrase. 

“My name is Ianassa,” she says once she finds it, with a fanged smile. “Gymir _will_ destroy your ship in the spinning sea, and we will take whatever trinkets remain, but if I choose to rescue you, he will look the other way. Enias has told me much of you, but remembrance may cloud him, or you may have changed. I must know you for myself. Tell me your story.”

Viren tries to keep it brief, though it’s long enough that by the time it’s done, both of his children and Aaravos have wandered off to gather their things and started to return. Only Raum remains the whole time, listening politely to things he already knows. Amusingly, more and more Brinefolk edge up to the ship, clinging to the side to hear him. 

Knowing she could read his mind and asked him to speak out loud anyway, Viren takes this for a test, not just of what he has done, but how honest he chooses to be. He avoids outright lies, but takes a page from Aaravos’ book in not detailing _everything._ He can’t elide his purpose, though, not under the direct question. The reaction isn’t what he expects. 

“You mean to--to destroy the--” She looks behind her, as if the dam itself were visible from here, or at all. 

“Xadia,” Aaravos cuts in, seeming to have realized something (always one step ahead) and grinning like a salesman, “will be one land once more, _if_ we succeed.”

Chatter like startled birdsong rises from both sides of the boat, which rocks under the movement of all the Brinefolk risen inquisitively from the depths. Though they speak the common tongue, they must rely in part on their mind-reading, and their accent is almost impenetrable. Something about a _mother?_

More of them surface from where they must have been hiding, doubling at least. It’s hard not to be conscious of being severely outnumbered.

“What is it?” Viren asks her. “What are they saying?”

“We are not as long-lived as some, but we keep our history,” she says, almost defensively. “They talk of _Mother’s-Arms_.”

Claudia must catch the word _history_ because, having found some oatcakes safe from the storm, she breaks into a scurry and finds a place in their little circle.

“The Western Brinefolk once made our home among the reefs and caverns between Xadia and the Isle of Wyrms.” says Ianassa. “It was fertile and ever-giving, the land shaped like an embrace, so we called it _Mother’s-Arms_ . Then, the dragons cut the land and it bled into the sea, which began to spin. Our ancestors begged Luna Tenebris to help us, but she said we _all_ must sacrifice to ensure Xadia’s safety. Of course, we volunteered to _defend_ the crossing, lethally if necessary.”

A tense look passes between Viren and Claudia. Soren and Raum are careful not to interrupt when they return.

“Mostly, when the Children of Elarion wanted things from the sea for their magic, they paid us to retrieve them,” she explains. “They were near-harmless in the water. It was easy to hide away what was truly treasured, so we had no quarrel. Still, we would have destroyed them if it was the price of returning to our home _._ Luna Tenebris refused to hear us, the same as the elves of the Western Rivers.”

Aaravos sympathizes. “I remember.”

“You do?” Ianassa’s eyes twinkle. 

_“You do?”_ Claudia frowns sidelong, openly irritated that this is the first she’s hearing of it.

“Let me see,” Aaravos recalls, “I believe her exact words to _me_ were: _they should be grateful to keep their nexus._ In contrast, I suppose, to her poor aggrieved Moonshadows.”

Ianassa’s lips make a hard line. “The moon and the ocean were meant to be _friends._ The ancestors rejoiced when Luna Tenebris ascended. No one imagined she’d be so cold to us.”

“What about the Ocean Dragons?” Viren asks. “Couldn’t they do anything?”

“They are not as choosy as we are. They are equally happy to live almost anywhere at sea, and they still have the Isle of Wyrms besides. For hundreds of years, the wisdom of the dragons has simply been: _make the best of how things are.”_

“Screw that,” says Claudia, 

Ianassa laughs. “You sound like Enias. At any rate, that’s why they got excited. If the magic could flow, if the blood of the land no longer spilled, then the sea would calm.”

“Then you understand.” Aaravos leans closer to her. “If we accomplish our aims, well, one might say a rising tide lifts all ships?”

“Yes,” agrees Ianassa as if it is obvious, indifferent to the casual intimacy he uses to unsettle. Without explaining any further, she pulls herself up by the rail and flips overboard. 

The ship judders beneath them like a cart on the road whose coachman took to the whip all at once, pushing it steadily west, presumably by ocean magic.

Alongside them, Ianassa appears, keeping pace easily. 

“Well?” Viren calls. 

“Gymir pulls your ship, to be consumed by the Spinning Sea!” She calls back, and Viren wonders if she doesn’t enjoy, maybe a little, the moment of alarm before she adds: “But he has agreed to our request for the path. Jump when I say, and you will be safe!”

They gather what they can carry, and it turns out to be wise that they do so proactively, because there isn’t much warning once the elves cheerfully shout that it’s time _._ At first it sounds mad. Viren’s not the worst swimmer, but there’s no way he could swim to shore at this distance. 

Then, he sees it: a long breakwater reaching toward them like a charcoal tongue curled protectively around a calm patch. 

“Put your shoes in your satchels, bring only what you can swim with. We make for those rocks. Raum,” Viren checks, because he’s seen everyone _else_ here in deep water before, “you can swim?”

Raum nods, though the fear in his eyes is concerning. Both of Viren’s children have seemingly inherited his tendency to throw themselves in the way of problems, for better or worse, and if Raum ends up in danger, so will Soren, and then Claudia in turn. It’s easy to see how quickly the situation could devolve if that nod is a lie.

“You’re sure?” Viren confirms.

He nods again. Hopefully one of the elves playing around following them will notice if he starts to drown.

Viren is last into the water, and last to pull himself onto the rocks, soaked and shivering _\--again--_ like a rat climbing out of a moat. By silent agreement, they all turn and watch as the ship moves by eerie magic toward the whirlpool in the distance, bound for destruction. There’s nothing for it but to press onward.

Ianassa is already out of the water, at the head of their single-file line, chatting away with Raum and Aaravos.

“Did he hit his head?” Claudia turns back to ask. 

Viren frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Like, during the storm maybe? I didn’t see before, because his hair’s so fluffy, but now that it’s wet it looks like he got the worst goose-egg of all time.”

Soren stops abruptly as if he’s startled, forcing Claudia and Viren to stop as well. With forced casualness he asks, “Whaaat’s goin’ on back here?” 

“Nothing,” Claudia says. “Just, Raum’s got a bump on his head. I think. I can’t tell, Aaravos keeps blocking my view. If he got hurt, why didn’t he tell anyone?”

Aside from a brief period as a pre-teen, Soren never did a lot of swearing, or at least, not near enough to Viren to often need correcting. That makes it all the more surprising when he curses under his breath now, about something comparatively minor.

“I’m sure it’s not a big deal,” Claudia says. “He’s acting normal. Probably doesn’t hurt too bad.” 

“No, it’s… look, can we not talk about this right now?”

“Soren?” Viren’s tone is half question, half warning.

In response, Soren sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Just, not right now. Later. He’s not hurt. I want to talk to him first, before I--I swear it’s not a big deal, or it doesn’t have to be, but, later, okay? Just don’t bring it up.”

Viren looks at Claudia, her arms folded and her eyebrows up, ready to argue. In his heart of hearts he agrees with her, but as desperate as Soren seems--

“Let’s drop it for now,” Viren says firmly, with an askance look for Claudia who shrugs, rolls her eyes, and continues picking her way across the rocks.

Under her breath, she mutters, “And if no one tells me, I’ll ask Aaravos, _he’s_ close enough to have a better look.”

The breakwater leads to a thin line of beach and a dark lagoon in the shadow of a steep mountainside. Viren recognizes it as the other side of the one he came upon during one of his most ambitious infiltrations -- ambitious and _idiotic_. It was right after Sigrin left and Sarai (not to be outdone) died, both in quick succession. He was seized with the kind of recklessness that descends on a man at a time like that, leaving him helpless against his most insane impulses. 

He returned with a bounty that would have thrilled him any other time, but did _not_ include the one thing he came for. He didn’t tell Harrow until years later what he was really chasing, but he did let slip how dangerous it had been, and Harrow was furious with him for taking a risk. 

_You have two young children, in case you forgot._ The worst part was, he hadn’t.

They’d both lost so much. It was natural Harrow would reach out to keep Viren close, with his claws if he had to. Years later, memories of that trip would soften his heart when Claudia ran off to have her own brush with disaster, if a rather more successful one.

He already knows what they’ll see in a moment: A little house pressed against the cliff face, made of sea-smooth stones held together with green mortar. The uneven steps at the front door go right down into the lagoon. Around one side of the house, clothes dry on a line held by weathered sticks, fluttering like the flags of a tiny country all their own.

Or at least, they did back then. From here he can see the ledge on the escarpment behind the house where he once knelt and saw a _ghost_ rush outside to meet a Tidebound elf. It was hard to even believe what he was seeing, but he lingered, already certain and moreso by the second that it _was_ Enias, ankle deep in the water, trousers rolled to his knees, lifting her into his arms and spinning her on the step to welcome her home.

Now, he approaches the little stone house from another angle, path curving around the edge of the water, and the scene plays out just the same. Surely she’s called out to his mind, because he runs out to greet them. Barefoot in wine-colored trousers and a pea-green tunic untied at the throat, he looks for all the world like an exotic bird reunited with its mate, perhaps preparing a gift, or a dance. 

Only after he’s picked her up and spun her around (and he must be keeping in shape if he can still do that) does he acknowledge anyone else is even there.

“Viren!” He calls out as if they’re ten times as far apart as they are. “Spirits, man, it’s been an age! I heard you were dead!”

The hug is crushing, but brief. He doesn’t mention when he saw them before, instead sticking with: “Likewise.”

“You look great!”

“Enias,” Viren breathes out a self-effacing laugh, “there’s no need to--”

“No, no! I mean that! You look like I always thought you ought to.”

“Bedraggled? Damp?”

“Full of mysterious gravitas. Like you’ll wander out of a cave and bring down the mountain with magic at any moment.”

“How poetic,” Viren deadpans. He certainly doesn’t _feel_ full of mysterious gravitas. He feels cold and sore. There’s comfort, though, in the way they fall into old patterns as if no time passed at all. 

“And these must be the children Nassa told me about -- on her way over, I mean. At first we could only talk within sight of each other, you know? Now… oh, a few hundred yards, I suppose? Stronger bond, longer distance, or so I hear.”

“All my friends are jealous,” Ianassa somehow manages to boast and sound shy all at once. 

“Even if I _am_ a lousy human. Sheesh, look at these two, it’s as if you cloned yourself! That, or you found someone as tall as you are.” Enias examines Soren briefly and says, “Do you know your father used to have hair almost as light as yours? Every year we’d start school it’d be a shade darker.”

“I’ve… seen paintings,” he replies. In the face of Enias' boundless energy, even _Soren_ is a little bowled over.

“You must be exhausted, I got most of the rundown already.” He taps his head to indicate how. “Hope you like seafood. There’s a fire, and dry clothes, though, full disclosure, they’re mostly from a few shipwrecks, and some people I killed.”

There’s an awkward silence. Amiable as he is, everyone expects him to say he’s joking. He doesn’t, and all are surprised except maybe Viren (and Ianassa, of course) and he can feel Soren and Claudia and Raum’s eyes on him as if to say _you brought us to_ who _, exactly?_

A touch lower, Enias says, “I’m not going to kill _you,_ if you were worried about that. It’s not as if I _wanted_ —I can’t let them find me here, especially with the blind dragon up north. You understand.”

“Completely,” Aaravos agrees a bit too readily, because of course he does.

_“You_ I trust not to tell anyone where I am. It’s Moonshadow elves, usually,” Enias goes on, leading the way into the house, clearly accustomed to putting voice to every thought. “Their… path-thing... is just that way, not _too_ close, but close _enough_ they make a wrong turn sometimes.”

“A _very_ wrong turn, by the sound of it.” Aaravos is deeply amused and not hesitating a bit to show it.

“Granted, with the truce, I’m not really sure at this point--”

“Enias,” Viren stops him a couple steps past the threshold, hand on his shoulder, as everyone filters into the room around them. 

“Yeah.” He lets out a long breath, puffing out his cheeks. “Guess you can tell I’ve spent a couple decades with mind readers for company. The old filter’s a little…”

He makes a noncommittal wavy hand gesture. 

Over dinner, Ianassa has a revelation and nearly drops the plate she’s holding with the force of it.

“Hm?” Enias looks at her but she’s looking at Soren and Raum.

“I was trying to place your voices. I heard them not long ago in the memories of another, but I could not recall whose. I’ve got it now. _You_ must be the young human men who aided Laetifica of the Clearfolk!”

“You… know each other?” Soren stammers, revealing so much in so few words.

“News travels fast over water, and the Littlesea is but one link from here. Such interesting gossip could _hardly_ be stopped. She said you smelled of items recovered from the _Elephant’s-Necklace._ ”

Next to Soren, Raum makes a choked sound. 

“That doesn’t sound like a good smell,” Soren points out.

“It is a river, in the northwest, though I suppose most of the human lands must smell much the same now, without magic in them.” says Ianassa. She eats something different, something uncooked. “Her predicament is the same as ours, of course.”

Viren leans forward with interest. “You mean, she wants her old waters back. Elephant’s necklace, northwest, that sounds like Neolandia.”

“The difference is _she’s_ mostly alone in this. It isn’t worth it to most, there are plenty of good riverlands in the east. Laetifica, though…” She looks at Raum. “You know what she’s like.”

“Powerful?” Raum processes out loud.

“Indeed, her mateship may have little love in it, but it has grown her magic immensely. The moon and the tides are always stronger together.” There’s blood at the corner of her lips. “What I meant, though, is that she longs to go back to a place she’s never been. I think she’d like to rule the old river, but I doubt she’d be interested in anything less.”

It’s food for thought, at least. Viren can already sympathize with her. She must feel about the _Elephant’s-Necklace_ as some humans feel about Elarion -- deprived, even knowing so little about it. 

While straw mats are rolled out for everyone in the main room, only Raum actually makes it to his. Claudia and Soren fall asleep by the fire, curled up at opposite ends of a low bench littered with cushions.

Enias’ wife goes off into the water carrying a slender musical instrument, some kind of flute made of bone. (Viren briefly finds it odd she doesn’t announce her departure, but then he realizes she probably _did)_ Aaravos stands on the pebbles outside, perhaps enjoying the clear night now the clouds have well and truly passed and the moon is behind the mountain.

Viren and Enias talk in the bedroom so as not to disturb anyone, sitting cross-legged on the bed like they used to do. The conversation cycles around to Soren and Claudia maybe three times before he realizes Enias is a little envious, and only when Viren calls him on it does he admit that they’ve tried, and failed, as expected. When Viren suggests he could try and find something in dark magic to help, he expects it will be rejected (and it is) but he still has to offer.

It gets late before he finally steps outside, obeying the pull he feels from Aaravos. 

“Viren,” Aaravos greets without looking. “Good timing.”

“Well, you did call.”

“Do you find it surprising?” 

“What?” Viren plays along. Instinctively, he senses he should, and he goes with the intuition.

“That blood magic and ocean magic intersect, in this way.”

“Not especially.” It seems obvious, in fact. Salt and other minerals, dissolved in both. Water carries a message like a boat, like a bottle, and blood is mostly water anyway. The difference is the translucency, the clarity, truth seen through the water like sand. _Blood_ is opaque.

“It reassures me to know you understand.”

“Tonight is the night,” Viren _understands_ that also, but only the bare fact of it, not the reason why. 

“It is.”

“I didn’t think it would be so soon.” He twists one hand in the other and absorbs Aaravos’ odd grief into his own, along with a sense of--creaking and groaning and twisting apart--“The ropes.”

“Not as simple as I made it sound. Still,” he admits slowly, one little movement of his mouth at a time, enunciating like an actor on stage, his hands in a dead man’s pockets. “The right thing.”

“I didn’t take you for the type.” There’s something about that, faintly a betrayal.

Aaravos chuckles, so low it can barely be heard. Viren has _amused_ him. Maybe he’s always been the fool. With Harrow, springing into handstands and jumping through flaming hoops, and now in this moment more than ever.

“The boy is astral projecting at this very moment. Startlingly talented, for a human. If only he were older, I could truly ask more of him.” 

“How am I meant to know what to do, then, if we make it back?” Viren ignores the tributary in the conversation, stays with the main branch. 

Aaravos turns to him. “I’ll tell you. _Everything._ I won’t even make you ask. Only… listen, and drink. I promise, the potion _does something,_ this time.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you were wondering whether Soren and Claudia's conversation about dark magic is a tease for ["On The Shoulders of Giants"](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1581514) (which I do hope to add to eventually once this story is done) the answer is yes.
> 
> Again, two-chapter update. If you're not catching this immediately on update, there's probably another chapter to read! :-)


	25. Book Six: Ocean | Chapter Five: Tidal Bore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.”_   
>  **― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've followed an email link, make sure you're on the right chapter, this was a double-chapter update. And as usual, if you've had a tab open for a bit without getting to it, please reload, I probably made some last minute post-update adjustments.

**Book Six: Ocean**

**Chapter 5: Tidal Bore**

_“Make it look real,”_ Rayla mutters sarcastically, with an impression of Narampu’s accent even _she_ knows is terrible. They made it look real, alright, maybe a little _too_ well.

Sure, it did get her out -- the second she was close enough, she slipped into the drain passage and the last thing she heard of Narampu was her _somehow_ successfully convincing the other two elves that none of them would fit down here. 

She feels bad, because as a spy Narampu’s obviously better at slyly pulling her punches than Rayla is, and _Rayla’s_ not the one who had to throw the fight, but that doesn’t means she’s pleased about the cuts from that crystal knife getting dragged through the slime and mildew, not to mention the bruises darkening under her clothes.

Of course, _making it look real_ also meant leaving Rayla alone to navigate in the dark on her own. That was bad enough, but once she finally found a way out, she found the mouth of the storm drain surrounded by guards. The next one was the same, and so is this one. 

Enough light filters into the passageway to tell her the sun’s almost down. How long has she been creeping around, getting lost, thwarted, held in here like some kind of mole creature? Hours, at this point? And for what?

The guards are clearly committed to waiting her out, and _they_ can do shift changes, so: screw it. There’s nothing for it. 

As soon as it’s full dark, she reaches into the hidden pocket she used to keep moonberry juice in (half-wishing she’d brought that instead) and smashes her last moon opal against the side of the passageway.

It is a _rush._ Ordinarily, under a full moon, the strength of the form or its flexibility in and out of moonlight depends on the skill and training of the elf in question, but the magic of the opal gives her _maximum_ power by default, she doesn’t even have to try. She could do a song and dance right in front of those morons and they wouldn’t spot her if she didn’t want to be seen. 

No need to gloat, though: she just slips past them, and that’s that. Time to head back and hope Sigrin’s had better luck. 

Although… It’s kind of a waste, isn’t it? The opal gives her _hours_ like this, and she used it for something that took all of five seconds. She cranes her neck to look straight up the castle wall and flexes her hand, half phased out of the world of the living and guarded from notice. 

With a backward glance at the completely unsuspecting guards, she leaps up above the drainage output and scales the wall like a spider, using blades wherever she lacks holds for her hands and feet until there she is again, hanging from the bars on Callum’s window--

And who’s _that?_

On the other side of the glass, hovering in the doorway, is a lithe, _beautiful_ Moonshadow elf, a little taller than Callum, standing _far_ too close and giggling at whatever he just said. Rayla ducks away from the window in case she spots her (unlikely, but not impossible) but hears him _thank_ her for something? 

It’s probably nothing. There are lots of attractive elves out there, and some of them _will_ be agents. Granted she wasn’t expecting to see one so _young,_ but then her former co-assassins didn’t expect to see _her_ either, right? 

Nothing to worry about.

Then again, if Rayla started out his enemy and stole his affections from someone he was close to--

At the _click_ of the door being closed and latched, she pulls herself back up again and, confirming he’s alone, raps on the window, the pattern they established a lifetime ago at a party, on a parapet.

Callum jumps like his feet are on fire and opens the glass, swinging it out into the space between the wall and the bars, frowning.

“It’s _me,”_ she says, and watches him squint. 

“Rayla!?” His voice cracks. “I--but you--I can’t see you at all. Where are you? Usually I--Wait, it’s not even a full moon, how are you doing that?”

“Opal,” She says. “All the Moonshadow powers, none of the waitin’.”

“You... didn’t use that just to come see me, did you?”

“And what if I did?” She didn’t, but she can clarify later. _Don’t say it, don’t say it--_ “You got other plans I’d be interruptin’?” (Damn it.)

“What? Oh. How long were you there?”

Not quite what she was hoping the answer would be. Two can play at this game. “Long enough.”

“Rayla--” He rubs his face with his hands. “I get it. It’s weird. Um, this is really uncomfortable, is there any way I can… _see you_ -see you? Wait. Let me try something.”

She watches him dip around his desk and sit half-underneath it by the window, curled against the edge so he’s got a safe place to sit exposed to the starlight. He murmurs something, and leaves his body behind. What’s particularly bizarre, is that he’s still sitting there, _just_ offset from his body, a lavender afterimage of himself. 

“Ha, it worked!”

Astral projections can see her, even like this? “Good to know,” she says, truly. 

“Okay. We have a lot to talk about.” And then, at the way her ears dip, he waves his hands and says, “No no no, not like that. I just, I haven’t seen you in awhile, and a lot of stuff has happened. I’ll start with her. Edile.”

“Good plan.”

“She’s my new, uh, bodyguard, I guess? Minister Runaan--”

“Wish you’d stop callin’ him that.”

“It’s what he is. We all have to deal with that, there’s no sense in pretending it’s not true. Anyway, he’s the one who picked her.” He lowers his voice to a whisper, bringing their faces close. “Look, I have a _lot_ of free time to think. It’s win-win for them, right? Whatever I do tells them something. If I’m… _receptive…_ it tells them _we’re_ not a thing anymore, which would be great misinformation, but I’m not willing to do that. I turn her down, it tells them I have some reason to think we _are_ a thing, which is dangerous for everyone.”

“So you string her along a bit?” 

_Not willing to do that_ is pretty mollifying. He’s not trying to convince her, he’s _justifying_ his choice that he sees as a given. He could feed this girl all kinds of crazy ideas that would get back to Runaan and poison their intelligence, but here he is, saying the advantage isn’t worth it, and a selfish joy blooms in her chest. 

“I hate this so much. I’m not even good at it. I hate that _they_ think I’m dumb enough to trust her, and I guess I am _almost_ that dumb because I actually _wish we could be friends_ . She doesn’t even seem like a bad person, she deserves better than to have to be _bait._ I mean, what if _I_ was a worse person? She could end up--” He swallows the idea. “It’s not like this is inherently safe for her, either.” 

“You do seem awfully concerned about her feelings,” Rayla points out, but she’s quickly losing steam on her jealousy. He gives her the most baleful, puppy-dog look, effect completely unhindered by the black scleras he gets being in astral form, and she groans. “Fine. I’ll go easy on you and admit I trust you.”

“Let’s go somewhere, just for a little while,” Callum says, and instinctively reaches to put his hand on hers where it grips the bar, and--

And it _connects._

“Callum? How are you… doin’ that?” 

“I thought you were doing that.”

They look at one another in stark confusion. Even like this, she can tell he’s blushing. Carefully, slowly, she asks, “Are you tellin’ me that an astral form and a Moonshadow form can _touch?_ And we never figured out how?” 

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s only that super-strong Moonshadow form? That’s probably what it is. That’s almost definitely what it is. I mean it has to be that, right?” Callum guesses, quietly a little frantic, sounding like his heart is fluttering. Can that happen, in astral form? Maybe it can _feel_ like it does, at least? “How uh… how long does that last?”

“Oh, awhile,” Rayla teases. She shifts her thumb so it brushes against his, which is such a small thing, it has no right to be this lovely. Nearly every time she’s managed to visit they kiss through the bars, but now there’s this _knowledge_ attached, this _potential._ “Probably until close to sunrise.”

They could go somewhere, the way they do when the moon is full and the sky is clear, but he’d feel _substantial,_ and no bars between them, no danger of discovery, just--

“Follow me,” She says, and he does. 

It’s actually a little infuriating. Here she is, rushing along merlons, skittering down sheer walls, and leaping from balcony to roof like a bloody great squirrel, and he just _floats_ along beside her. It’s adorable, especially the awe with which he regards the acrobatics, but also more than a little unfair. Could he carry her? Maybe, but she’d be insane to risk it not knowing how that contact works. 

One of the main reasons the castle is so defensible is that it’s surrounded by the river, with land across to three sides. On one side, the city. On another, Queen Regent Scyntyllah has taken up residence. The third, though, remains an unspoiled chunk of forest on an island not much bigger than the one where the castle sits. No bridges connect it to anything. When she asked once, Callum said his stepfather declared it a nature preserve.

It’s perfect, even if it does take a miserable series of leaps over water and the use of her blades on the cliffside to get to it.

“That was really impressive,” Callum comments as he helps pull her up onto the ledge, the kind of touch they once took for granted and she doesn’t think she ever will again. “I didn’t think you’d want to risk the, you know, rushing rapids and all that.”

“Some things are worth a little abject terror,” she says, glancing back over her shoulder at the menacing river as she catches her breath. “I think we’re alone now.”

“There doesn’t _seem_ to be anyone around.”

An abundance of caution means they step beneath the shadow of the trees before she grabs him by his stupid slightly-glowy shoulders and kisses him like she’s drowning and it’s the only way to get air. 

He responds in kind, but then pulls away, a little glassy-eyed. “Rayla wait, I--There were other things I wanted to tell you, other things that happened, important things--” 

But he kisses her again, and she loves that he almost can’t help it. His hands don’t know where to stay, on her shoulders, on her back, cupping her jaw, trembling a little. 

“It’s about the Star Arcanum,” he says, his face inches from hers. 

There is time, ultimately, for all of it. This one time, nothing needs to be sacrificed: not this, but also not talking, and not even exploring the little wooded island together. 

Thirsty from her time trapped, she drinks from a spring, and even finds some edible fruits, though those things she has to enjoy on her own. Callum can’t interact that much with other, non-Rayla things, but if he concentrates, he can make it _seem_ like he’s walking into the pool of water with her, or stretched out with her, pressed close with no bars between them in the rich grass of a little clearing, looking up at the stars. 

“I think I needed this,” Rayla says on a long exhale. “I know you can’t really see the day I had in my Moonshadow form but you’d probably be worried if you could.”

“Rayla?”

“Just, bad day, like I said. You know the rules.”

“I know, I know. Just, now you said that, I _am_ worried.”

“I’m alright. It’s over, for now at least. I’m more concerned about you.” She sits up on her elbow, hand on his chest. “I think we have to get you out of there.”

“Rayla.” He brushes his fingers across her cheek. “I promise--”

It’s _not_ about that,” she cuts him off. “I mean, it is kind of about that, but not the way you think. I know you had a lot of reasons to stay, but it doesn’t seem like they’re lettin’ anything valuable slip, and I think they’re getting more utility paradin’ you around to show everyone that what they’re doing is alright than _you’re_ getting letting them do it.”

“You talked about this with someone,” Callum observes.

“How can you tell?” 

“I just can. Doesn’t sound like your type of analysis, I guess. Too practical.” He tucks a stray hair behind her ear. “Not that you can’t _plan,_ just that you’re usually more intuitive, and immediate, when the situation lets you be. I like that about you. Recently I spend a lot of time thinking about things I like about you. I wanted to write them down, but that seemed risky, all things considered.”

“Fine, I admit it, someone else said it first. I dismissed it then, but now I think she was right,” Rayla carefully doesn’t name Hasima out loud. She plants a kiss at his jawline, and then his temple. “Besides which, imagine if we could spend time like this and I _didn’t_ have to look like a creep. And you could _write down_ anythin’ you like.”

“You know, I don’t care how many times I have to tell you your Moonshadow form looks awesome, I will _keep_ saying it until you--” His smile vanishes, and he sits up, eyes fixed to the southeast. “Rayla.”

“You alright?”

Confusion, and even a touch of panic, flood his eyes when he looks at her. “He’s gone. Aaravos is _gone.”_

* * *

Aaravos’ form was always temporary. Viren keeps telling himself this, after the talking is done and the body has dissolved into dust and blown away in the wind. It was always a half-measure, an unfinished project, a stepping stone. Everything is going as planned. 

This is what he intended, this is part of it, it was always temporary.

Everything is fine. 

Everything is fine, except Viren and his increasing sense that getting anywhere near him is some kind of punishment even a thousand-plus-year-old creature of the stars cannot avoid.

Ianassa generously contributed to Aaravos some material for the potion, though Aaravos refuses to say precisely what, or what he gave her in trade. It blew that link between them wider than Viren thought possible, to ensure there would be no misunderstanding, no confusion, not a single detail lost of how Aaravos means for things to go.

Quite possibly, Viren learned even more than Aaravos intended to let him see. The reverse might have been true as well. 

It’s necessary, there was never any other choice, but after it, the loss hurts worse, feels more like a blizzard coming in through a dead fireplace. Of course this is stupid, Aaravos isn’t even dead, not really. He’s just… gone, for now, to return if Viren doesn’t fail. 

It’s even _more_ ridiculous when Viren considers (as he is forced to) that the potion could have had a dual purpose. The sensation is motivating. Aaravos must have known, may well have wanted him to feel this way, as _incentive._ It’s exactly the kind of thing he’d do.

Attractive as it is to sit on the stones outside until dawn, his body _demands_ warmth, and sleep. When he makes it to the doorway, Aaravos’ clothes bundled in his arms, he finds Enias standing silent beneath the lintel. Aaravos must have told Ianassa, who must have told him, because the look on his face says he knows, he already _knows,_ and Viren doesn’t have to say a thing. That’s good, because he’s not sure he can just yet. 

Incredible, how one can know something is coming and yet be completely unprepared.

All three of the kids are still asleep in the dim light of the embers. No need to wake them. He’ll tell them in the morning, come what may.

Enias doesn’t make him sleep on a straw mat. 

Eons ago, this wasn’t at all unusual. Boys’ schools are difficult, everyone knows that, and no one will ever admit it or change it, because nearly every man who grows out of one cannot fathom the idea of perhaps _not_ subjecting the next generation to that unique form of torture. Each day is relentless, a war both physical and psychological. Jockeying for power and position and _safety_ is just as important as textbooks in preparing a noble young man for his future. Beyond anything else, they’re a kind of training ground for a life of quiet desperation. 

There’s a reason he never sent Soren to one.

Among the reasons he imagines men are so sentimental about it is encapsulated perfectly in Viren and Enias. All that time apart, and nothing’s changed. To survive a war, one needs brothers in arms, and that is exactly what they have always been. Maybe that was always the point. Subject young men to agony acute enough to tie them to one another. If so, well, fine. It worked. 

Enias understands, even from what spare details Viren has shared with him. He doesn’t force Viren to try to make sense of it in words.

On the other side of a doorway to a shimmering land beyond life and death, Aaravos must be waking in the stale and senseless air of his prison. He said it was the spell with the ropes, but Viren knows there was _some_ leeway. The question is how much. It can’t merely be luck that it happened just when Viren was most likely to have a shoulder to lean on. 

If it’s deliberate, would that be a pragmatic choice on Aaravos’ part, making sure his co-conspirator didn’t fall to pieces, or compassion? 

Wherever Ianassa goes to sleep, she isn’t there when Enias leads him back to where they’d been talking before, but with more blankets this time, and a nightcap shared in silence to calm the nerves before drifting off. Enias’ feet are ice cold, just like in the drafty old dormitory, when they guarded one another from nightmares both waking and sleeping. 

Viren doesn’t dream.

_“And you we_ re going tell us _when,_ exactly!?” 

A father’s instinctual reaction to a daughter’s distress startles Viren awake after what seems like moments but, by the sun, was clearly hours. She’s as upset as he’s ever heard her, voice cracking, even from the other room he knows she’s seconds from tears or violence or possibly both. 

“Sshh--”

“What, did you think I’d keep my voice down because people are _sleeping?_ Like that _matters?!_ I wonder, how closely related is he to the one that _killed dad?”_

Viren disentangles himself from bed and stumbles into the main room to find the three of them clustered by the mantel, Claudia’s face almost as red as the half of her hair, and Soren looking like a dog that’s been smacked on the nose with a rolled-up sheaf of paper. Raum is as distant as he could be without leaving the house, or the continent, entirely. 

“This is _exactly_ why I didn’t--Oh. See, now you woke dad,” Soren complains.

Claudia whirls around. “Raum’s a moonshadow elf!”

And with that, she storms out and slams the door behind her.

From outside, Viren hears her yell, “Where’s Aaravos!?”

* * *

What makes the Dusty Pigeon such a perfect place is its odd construction. In the front, the bar and the accommodations seem to be completely separate establishments, even with different names.

One door at street level leads down to the basement where food and drink are served (though even the basement has a cellar of its own) and another, seemingly next door, opens to stairs going up to the rooms for rent, under the name _Nine Lives Lodging_. 

At the back of the building, however, an old servant’s stairway connects the lot, which means everyone who stays there knows what’s really what, and it’s as anything to conceal exactly where one is coming and going, and when, and with whom. 

Otto, the grandfather-like owner of the building, claimed to Sigrin he named it this way because when he bought it, the whole mess reminded him of a cat having just pounced upon a hapless bird. He also confessed he knew immediately how people would want to use the feature, and leaned in.

People, he told her, will get up to all kinds of secret business one way or another, so they might as well do it in safety, with a drink, instead of out in the cold, and Otto may as well get paid for it. 

(He quite vocally likes having Sigrin’s lot around, overflowing as they are with cures for arthritis, gout, congestion, and the common troublemaker. The relationship between the mages and the Dusty Pigeon reminds her of clownfish, hiding in an anemone.)

She loses track of time so badly, obsessing over the events at the castle for things she may have overlooked that would reveal what might have become of Rayla, that he startles her when he gets up to start the day’s stocks and stews. The sun’s been filtering through the dirty windows high on the front wall at ground level, and she hadn’t noticed. 

Otto, who called Rayla _charmingly terrifying._ Much as it’s not a high priority, Sigrin would rather not see him disappointed.

A young man in a colorful patchwork jacket and dramatic spectacles takes a seat at a table close to hers, large book in hand to read over breakfast. He’s not one of hers (that she knows of) but he seems strangely familiar. Did she see him at the castle, perhaps? He seems like he belongs there.

Hasima comes down the back stairs carrying the mug from her room, which Otto dutifully fills for her and gestures to where Sigrin’s already (still) sitting.

“Knew I’d find you down here,” she says blearily, in clothes that look slept-in. “I know I talk a lot of shit, but I hope she makes it back.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Sigrin says, having already jumped to them herself hours ago.

No sooner are the words said than outside, the door to the _Nine Lives_ opens and closes with a clatter. Hasima pours half her tea in Sigrin’s empty cup, and they both take a steadying sip as they wait, faint footsteps audible upstairs. 

Then, downstairs. 

She has a black eye, torn clothes, and dirt in her hair, but it’s Rayla, alright. Not only is she alive, but despite how beat-up she is, she’s got a grin a mile wide and looks like she’s walking on air. 

“What are you so happy about!?” Hasima says. “You like you’ve been through the eight trials.”

Rayla sounds raspy and loose from lack of sleep. “I’m sorry. I _really_ am. I knew you’d worry, but… I hoped you wouldn’t worry _that_ much. I’m fine. Bet’er than fine. _”_

“Well did you find it?” Sigrin asks. Whatever irritation she might feel is blunted by relief, and a touch of amusement. 

“No luck,” Rayla says, sinking into her usual chair. “Narampu and I were caught, as well. We had a bit of a show-fight and I _‘got away.’_ I do not advise gettin’ on _her_ bad side, I’ll say that.”

“Fuck,” Hasima says, punctuating it by hitting her mug on the table and spilling tea on her hand. The man in the jacket glances over, and Hasima gives him a clear _mind your business_ look in return. “How screwed are we?”

“I think they bought it as real, or near enough. Narampu’s probably havin’ a bad day, but it could be worse.”

“We can all hope,” Sigrin says, with a pointed look at Rayla’s injuries. She went through all that and still looks like the crow that got the peanuts, so: “I’m guessing you happened to run into a certain someone? Somehow?”

“Got it in one.”

_“Without_ adding any danger, I hope?” This is the _only_ detail she wants to know.

“Not in the least, I swear it. How’d _you_ fare?”

Sigrin catches Hasima’s eye-roll, it’s probably for the best her answer gets back to the point. “It’s not in the treasury, either. I got spotted too, of course by the one person who’d know I wasn’t a real cleric.”

“Ugh,” Rayla says, and Sigrin is inclined to agree. _“That woman.”_

“I’m sorry,” Hasima chuckles. “That was probably terrifying, but what I wouldn’t give to have seen her face! _Please_ tell me she looked like she saw a ghost.”

“Oh, several ghosts, at least,” Sigrin says, and yes, that _was_ a _little_ satisfying, despite everything. “Fortunately I was already done by then, and right after she saw me, Runaan called for her, the hallway filled up with agents, everything went crazy, I assume because of this one.” She thumbs toward Rayla. 

“Glad to be of service,” Rayla lilts. “But if it’s not in the treasury _or_ the armory…”

She trails off. 

Apparently sensing his moment, the man in the jacket stands up and leaves. On his way out, he drops a napkin on their table, and all at once, Sigrin realizes where she remembers him from. 

He was just a little boy, then, a child of one of the servants, always left on his own in the library while his mother worked, though seemingly content enough about it, looked after by the head librarian as if she were his own auntie.

Sigrin flips the napkin over to find a messy scrawl of letters in charcoal:

**INSIDE THE STATUE, IN HER OFFICE.**

* * *

The border crossing at the southern edge of the land makes Raum feel he’s somewhere else, another continent entirely. It doesn’t seem like something that could or should exist in this one. Lava pours as if the land itself is an enchanted, infinite ewer, and the entire area is shrouded with steam, forever puffing out from where it meets the sea. Bits of pumice cling to each other in an insubstantial raft that covers the water below. The impression is of having come to the end of the world.

Few, Ianassa told them, are aware of a way to cross here. Just below the surface, concealed by the heaving, spongy pebbles, an arc of stone has grown up from the sea floor where the denser bits of lava have cooled. Bit by bit, it built up over the centuries. One day it might crest the surface and appear as a curved thread of land linking the two sides, but for now it remains hidden, walkable knee-deep in the water if one treads carefully and taps a staff out in front to find solid footing.

Even at a bit of a distance, the water is so hot as to be uncomfortable (if not dangerous) and they all come out with bright red calves. 

Fortunately, Enias recommended a valley route that snakes almost all the way through the mountains to the Weeping Bay, safe and easy enough of a passage to allow a certain amount of _spreading out._ Raum would prefer not to be _perceived_ in general, right about now, and no one actually stops him from lingering in the distance at the far back of their line. 

He can’t see any other way to blunt the worst of what is an extremely embarrassing moment. There’s no choice but to come sit by the fire when they camp, cold as it still is here, but no one really talks.

Soren’s up ahead, close enough they could hear each other if they spoke loudly but giving him the space he’s asked for, at least for now. Beyond him, Claudia at first sticks close to her father, until they have some small argument while walking (too far ahead for Raum to hear the content of it) after which she falls back, leaving Viren alone at the front of their little constellation of travelers.

She hasn’t said a word to Soren since they fought, at least not that Raum’s aware of. 

Since the border he’s been unhurried, occasionally regarding Enias’ gift, even taking it out of his satchel and turning it over in his hands -- an end-blown instrument made of a whale’s bone, carved with intricate patterns. 

Technically it was from Ianassa, but Enias was the one to hand it to him, in private, just before they set out. Soren knows he has it. Neither Viren nor Claudia does yet, but it’s not a secret, it’s just too awkward to bring it up yet.

_“This is a whalesong flute. If you really need something, something make-or-break in this plan you’ve got, you can stick it in a river, or the sea, and blow. Sound goes for miles. Can’t guarantee you’ll get what you want, and you’ll probably have to trade something, but it’s worth a try. Nassa got permission from her folk to send you off with it. Giving it to_ you _was_ my _call. See, the second you turned up here, I recognized you, and I’ll bet anything you recognized me too. Us cockroaches know each other, don’t we?”_

(Raum bristled at that, but it changed nothing.)

_“No shame in it. Different reasons, same result: survivors. That big old asshole dragon up that way could torch the whole continent and somehow we’d still be standing: you, and me, and the other cockroaches. I’ll tell you one thing though, all the crap I had a grudge about for ages, ultimately that was the reason I ended up happy. And_ that _was just being poor. Nowhere near as potentially cool as what_ you’ve _got going on. So, you know, head up and all that.”_

He’s walking through the valley on autopilot, thinking about that, and doesn’t even see Claudia fall back further, letting Soren pass her, but she must do, because she winds up right next to Raum. 

“Hey,” She says, bringing him back to reality. 

What to say? He looks at her, hoping the invitation to say what she wants to is clear on his face.

“I’m sorry I freaked out. You know, if someone made it hypothetical, before, like: _you find out someone you know is half elf, what do you do?_ I wouldn’t have predicted that.” She blows out her cheeks in a sigh. “I would have thought I’d handle it better.”

“It’s okay. It brought up some stuff.”

“Well that doesn’t mean it’s _okay,_ and it’s not your job to make me feel better.” After a pause, she decides, “That’s _Soren’s_ job.”

“Soren thought you’d handle it better too,” Raum says quietly.

Strangely, Claudia seems to find that funny. “Okay, ouch, I mean, _fair,_ but ouch. I think part of it is, keeping that secret meant he was more loyal to you than me. Even if just in that one way. And it’s not like I have any right to be bothered by that, but I was.”

“Was?”

“Well, _am,_ a little. Fortunately though, I’ve come to the conclusion that love’s not a pie.” She blows right past the oddness of _that_ statement. “Anyway, I shouldn’t be giving you this speech yet, but consider it my sisterly revenge.”

“What speech is that?”

“The _your-intentions-toward-my-brother-had-better-be-honorable-and-if-you’re-toying-with-him-you’ll-have-me-to-deal-with_ speech.”

Suddenly, Raum’s shoes are _fascinating._ He can’t suppress a small smile, though. “Consider me... appropriately warned.” It’s not a lie. She’s a little scary.

“Good.”

She hurries to catch up with Soren, and Raum drags his feet enough to not overhear by accident.

The last night before they emerge from between the mountains, if the landmarks are right, Soren goes to the trouble of building a second fire so they can talk alone. 

“So uh. Crazy trip,” Soren says.

“As crazy as the last one?”

“Hm, nah, maybe a _little_ less crazy than that.” The eye contact after that makes them both laugh. “Is this okay? I know you wanted some… thinking time. You have no idea how bad I want to ask what you were thinking about but I’m guessing you have a reason.”

Raum doesn’t tell him that at this particular moment, he’s thinking about how there used to be a flower growing up the side of his old house on a vine, and it was the same color as Soren’s eyes. It’s driving him nuts that he can’t remember the name of it.

Soren sounds almost nervous, adding, “I just wanted to tell you again, I never wanted things to go like that. At least _dad_ handled it okay.”

“Seems like you took the brunt of it,” Raum points out. “I think your dad’s just got way bigger fish to fry. Did he tell you what the plan was from here?”

“Ha. He _did,_ can you believe it? There’s a sheep farm on the eastern side of the Weeping Bay that sells wool and yarn to the castle, mom and dad saved them from some kind of... sheep disease, I don’t know. They owe the family one, is the point, so we’re gonna pretend to be our own distant relatives, take their boat across the bay and hide under the wool in the cart to get into the city.”

“They won’t search it and find us?”

“Dad’s hoping it’s the same lady in charge of it as it used to be, he called her _an ornery old bat who’d make it more trouble than it’s worth to get in the way_. Anyway, that’s not even what I wanted to talk about. There was…” Soren swallows, goes quieter. “There was another thing.” 

Raum’s breath catches in his chest. Through the resulting cough, he says, “Go on.”

Soren takes a steadying breath, eyes on the fire. “While we’ve been walking, _I’ve_ been thinking too.”

“Soren?”

“I think I have to turn myself in, when we go back.”

“What.” The word falls from Raum’s mouth like a lead weight.

“I know. I know. This is why I wanted to talk to you about it.”

“You can’t do that.”

“What else _can_ I do? If I could get back inside? Maybe I could get dad’s staff back. Or that other thing. The cube-y thing. I know they’ll be suspicious, but I thought of that. I’ll make up some story about… I don’t know, getting lost, you kidnapping me, something like that--”

“No, I mean you _can’t do that._ Seriously. What do you think they’ll do, after you tell them whatever you tell them?”

“Take me back? Or at least, not arrest me?”

“Okay, but who are you going to tell this story to? Think.”

“Opeli, Runaan, probably the dragon.”

“And what can dragons smell?” Raum leads. “And how did you find Claudia? You promised me, Soren. You can’t keep that promise if they get you like that.”

“Well--”

“No. I know what you’re thinking. Trust me, I’ve been there. No matter what you think beforehand, there’s _no_ good you can do from the inside of that place.”

_“Crap.”_ Soren picks up a rock and throws it into a pile of other rocks in frustration “Guess this is why no one lets me plan things. _You_ don’t think I’m dumb, do you?”

“I think you’re getting nervous about going back. That close to your old home, your old life, and not able to touch it? Not even able to pretend, for a minute, that things are normal. That’d get to anybody.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

“Even if you could,” Raum risks, “I might just be enough of a jerk I wouldn’t want you to.”

Soren bites back a little smile, and Raum’s pretty sure the fire could go out, he’d still be just as warm.

* * *

Alone at the end of what Ezran assumes is the longest table in the world, he picks at a plateful of perfectly good food he just can’t bring himself to eat. Ylai guards the door as firm as if he were one of the decorative suits of armor. In the hall, Opeli and Runaan argue in stage whispers. 

A week after the incident, they still can’t seem to decide what to do with Narampu. Is it irony, that he trusts _her_ more than any of them? He’s still not totally clear on the meaning of that word, but he thinks he might be learning.

He managed to steal maybe five minutes alone with her before they locked her in a guest room, and he believes every word she said to him in that time, though he’s learned enough to know that most of it would _not_ make a useful argument. 

If it comes to it, he’ll try to throw his slight weight around to stop her being _punished,_ but they know that. There’s less he can do if Scyntyllah decides to dismiss her for failure rather than malice. After all, Narampu works for _her,_ in the end.

The only thing that can blunt the loneliness is when he closes his eyes, and goes somewhere else.

_Rayla wouldn’t hurt me, Zym, I’m sure of that. I trust her. She’s so brave, and she cares so much._

Sympathy echoes back and agreement. Zym misses her.

_Narampu said Rayla came for Lord Viren’s old staff, which seems weird, but I mean, it’s_ Rayla. _She wouldn’t want to touch something like that if she didn’t have a really good reason._

Zym agrees. Ezran comes to understand he’s scared too. 

_Your mom’s away a lot? Is she home now?_

Yes, it turns out, to both of those things. He overheard Zubeia talking about stirrings at the Moon Nexus, a Sun Dragon flying the ruler of Lux Aurea there. Zym’s impression is that his mother finds this deeply unsettling, though he doesn’t know why. 

Ezran adds to the picture. _Yes! King Xankar! He came here, some kind of diplomacy thing, like he had to say hello to me and Scyntyllah because he was in our land, I guess? He said he was going to the Caldera to help with the Moonhenge, but I thought Lujanne didn’t want it repaired. Or, maybe it’s okay to do that now. I just don’t get why the Sunfire elves would be involved._

At the time, it seemed like a stupid or rude question, but now he’s regretting not asking.

Zym’s no less confused. Ezran glances out into the hall. Could he get someone to investigate, or explain? Maybe Scytntyllah would. She tends to be a little more straightforward, maybe because _Scyntyllah_ doesn’t have to worry about making _Scyntyllah_ angry, like everyone else does.

Talking to Amaya is a production, involving Gren, and Zubeia, and a chain of translations, but given how strange everything’s been, it seems worthwhile to try. 

_Do you think we can talk to Amaya now? Oh, and maybe Janai knows something about King Xankar, too._

Eager assent reaches him, and Ezran can feel Zym careening around the corridors of the spire, half running, half flying, rounding them up with a determination that mirrors Ezran’s own. The sensation makes him smile, a real smile for the first time today.

_Good. I think we have to do something. I don’t know what yet. I know she told me to be patient before, but that was a while ago, and she doesn’t know what’s happened since then. Zym, I’m tired of waiting. I don’t think anything’s going to get better unless_ we _do something._

* * *

Viren is about eighty percent sure the sheepherder recognizes him, not so much _despite_ her never once questioning the _distant-cousin-of-Lord-Viren_ charade, but _because_ it is not at all a fleshed-out or particularly well-executed scheme and she gleefully goes with it regardless. 

Even now, as they unload themselves from the back of a smelly, sweaty wool cart in a quiet part of the lower city, she plays her role. 

“Be careful now,” she says, pressing a sackful of coins into Viren’s hand (never giving him a chance to protest) and speaking a little too loudly. “We’ve made a lot of _progress_ in this city, but there are still dark mages about. _Especially_ stay away from the Dusty Pigeon. Dangerous place, that. Rumor has it even the elves whose job it is to clean things up get nervous to go in there, what with those types.” 

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Viren says without blinking.

And then, just before she signals her horses to get moving, she adds: “And give my regards to Otto.”

She turns the corner and the hoofbeats fade. They all look at one another with more or less the same thought.

Well, at least _one_ of the thoughts is the same. The other, the one noisily dominant in Viren’s mind, is a sudden, overpowering fixation on cobblestones, gutters, wheel ruts, and all the other signs that he is unmistakably back where he came from, _more or less._ (Naturally there were times he would sneak into the lower city for teenage thrills, doing absolutely nothing of consequence but feeling terribly cool for having been there at all. He returned for more specific purposes later on.) 

Even the _smell_ is particular to Katolis, so full of memory and association it’s all he can do to not let his feet lead him first thing to his favorite herbalist (where they would _definitely_ recognize him, no matter who he claimed to be.)

With great, agonized self-control, he remains focused.

It isn’t hard to find the place. It’s had a bit of a reputation as long as Viren can remember, even in a part of the city _full_ of reputation. The fact that he’s about to bring his _children_ into that particular _den_ is just another layer of unreality on top of a situation he already can’t think about too much or he might come unwound altogether. 

Making things worse, when he finds it, there’s a sign on the door:

**CLOSED FOR PRIVATE FUNCTION**

“Well that’s ridiculous,” Viren says under his breath. “Who would be holding a private function at an establishment like this, at, what, ten thirty in the morning? In the middle of the week?”

“Are you sure this is the place?” Claudia whispers.

“Yes I’m sure,” he growls, cheeks over-warm at having to say it. It isn’t her fault, he supposes, she’d have no idea, _he hopes._

“What if it’s a trap?” Soren asks. 

“Then we’ll be ready for them,” Claudia says, closing her fist around something in one of the pockets of her robe.

“I _sincerely_ doubt that it is.” If the Dusty Pigeon has been taken over by the law, there’s probably little hope for anything. Viren knocks on the door as assertively as he can bring himself to do, setting the bells inside jangling. If he’s not much mistaken, he heard a teakettle, so there _must_ be someone inside. 

Heavy footfalls come up the wooden stairwell, and Viren’s nerves are a spring, pressed as tight as it will go. The door opens to reveal a short, balding fellow with a pot belly and a mustache like a gray shoebrush, wiping a glass on an apron so dirty it can’t possibly be helping. 

Behind him, Viren can see nothing of the inside of the bar -- this is a feature -- because of the walls and ceiling around the upper half of the steps. All he can see are worn wooden treads, a rickety railing, and the floor at the bottom, perhaps a corner of the actual bar itself. 

“Can you read, sir?” He asks, tapping the sign.

“Yes, I can certainly _read,_ but I would like… admittance, regardless,” Viren claims impatiently. 

“Have you got an invitation, then?” One hand holds the glass through the apron cloth, the other perches on his hip. 

“No, I don’t have--”

“Otto,” A voice from inside cuts Viren off, sound wafting up the steps. “Is someone giving you trouble?”

It is a voice he once described, at his most love-drunk poetic, as _incense smoke curling under glass._

It’s also impossible. 

“No, no, it’s quite alright ma’am,” says Otto as if he is talking to a normal, non-impossible person, turning to call down the steps. “Just some odd drifter types who don’t seem to be invited to the _private function,_ or rightly know the meaning of the phrase.”

Viren turns briefly to see Raum looking between Claudia and Soren with confusion. The expressions on their faces: the shock, the tightly suppressed hope. _They heard it too._ Viren’s not gone completely insane.

_“Odd_ people, are they? Well let me get a look at them,” answers the impossible voice, drawing nearer to the bottom of the stairs. 

Shameless, Viren tries to look over the man’s shoulder, but Otto catches the move and leans, fixing Viren with a deliberate glare, so it’s impossible for him to see her before she sees him. 

“You know how it is,” She rambles on, taking a couple steps up, also peering around Otto’s portly figure until he shifts sideways out of the way, right in the middle of her sentence. “Sometimes they don’t--oh.”

And yes, alright, he snaps out of that moment, then, but it happened, and he has to live with that, even if it _was_ a perfectly natural reaction to having thought she was dead. When one imagines a person dead, they idealize them a little. It’s normal. This is the real Sigrin. 

It almost helps. 

The mug of tea slips out of her hands (graceful, scarred) but doesn’t break, caught by her skirt, liquid splashing a dark streak on the fabric from the knee down. She barely seems to notice.

_That one was your own fault,_ Viren desperately wants to say as he watches her remember herself and scoop the mug off the stair where it’s fallen, but he can’t quite get his mouth to function. From behind him, he hears Soren and Claudia hiss whispers to each other, but he doesn’t process a word of it.

“Let them in, Otto,” she says, sounding as breathless as Viren feels. She disappears from sight to get out of the way. “Quickly.”

“Well if you’re sure,” he agrees, putting his hands in the air and muttering to himself as he heads back down the stairs. 

“What is it?” Asks another voice, familiar, but he can’t place it. “Who is it?”

Sigrin hisses something to the Neolandian accent, which replies with a splutter.

Another accent, this one Moonshadow, clearly says: “No, you _must_ be joking,” and then, “You’re _not_ joking.”

As he descends the stairs, he finds her not at all alone, though her table is the only one occupied. Two young women sit at her left and right, all casual interest, both around Claudia’s age if he guesses right. 

As expected from their accents, the one on the left is indeed a Moonshadow elf, her hair tied back and interspersed with braids. The most notable thing is the way it isn’t only her blades but _everything_ about her that looks like a sharpened edge. He’s seen her before, but can’t recall where. There aren’t a lot of options. None of them are good, all raise questions. 

On the right, a proud Neolandian face he recognizes a beat too late. _Surely not._

“Princess Hasima,” and then, recalling his manners, “Your majesty?” 

_“Your majesty?”_ Mocks the elf, rolling her eyes dramatically, and Viren can _almost_ place her, it’s on the tip of his tongue.

“Queen, technically,” answers Hasima. “Father, dead. Brother, dead. I believe you may know more about that than I do. Not much left to be queen of. Hence,” she gestures around her.

“Ah.”

_“You_ were dead,” Soren accuses Sigrin, standing protectively in front of Claudia and Raum both. (who is silent, but calculating, the gears are clearly turning overtime, her focus on the elf.)

“I was Hylja,” she says, defeated. 

“No. How? You--” Soren draws away, if only slightly. “Why didn’t you tell me? Didn’t you trust me?”

Claudia turns and practically melts the side of Soren’s face off with her stare. Soren told them all about _Hylja_ long ago, and it’s easy to imagine that Claudia’s thoughts are the same as Viren’s: _would I have known?_ Viren’s fairly certain he would. Claudia, in his opinion, _might,_ if she were particularly on the ball and not thinking about other things. He doesn’t hold it against Soren that he didn’t.

“I’m sorry, Soren.” 

“How come everybody wants to _say_ that to me these days?” He almost turns, as if to leave, but Raum’s hand crosses his body to land hard on Soren’s forearm and he stops.

A series of weighty looks passes between them, a silent conversation Viren can’t hope to understand, but at the end of it Soren swallows, quieted, unlike his sister.

_“You_ didn’t write me back!” Claudia finally gets her turn to protest.

“It’s the same problem, Claudia. It wasn’t safe, not for you, and not for--I have people here to protect now, too. Look, we’re all here, now. Please, everyone just sit,” Sigrin says. She turns to Otto (clearly eavesdropping from behind the bar) and says, “I know it’s early, but I think we could all use a stiff drink. Something warm.”

“On me,” Hasima says, and no one argues. Only she must be know what she spirited out of Neolandia before it fell. “Otto, seven of that thing I like.”

The only sound in the room is the scraping and thumping of four chairs being pulled up. It’s a tight fit, the table only really meant for four or _maybe_ five.

As he sets down steaming mugs of what smells like spice tea spiked with something strong, Otto asks, “Will they be staying then? I believe I’ve got one vacant at the moment, and a couple of spare cots, though you know how I feel about more than two to a room. It’d cost you a fair bit extra.”

“Obviously they’re staying, where else would they stay,” Sigrin says, exasperated. “It’s amazing they even got here without someone carting them off.”

“Claudia can stay with me, Isn’t that right? I know we only met a few times, but we did get on.” Hasima offers quickly, her smile mutinous and _damn_ if she can’t read a room. Viren’s not sure he’s ever seen someone do the math that fast. “And if you two can be mature enough to tolerate one another at least until another room is vacant,” she nods to Viren and Sigrin, “then it’s settled, two to a room, as Otto prefers.”

Claudia must be following Hasima’s absolutely _surgical_ train of thought because she nods along as though she’s in on something. Otto shrugs and disappears into the kitchen.

“Y’know suddenly I find it very easy to imagine you runnin’ a country?” Observes the elf with open amusement.

“Suddenly, what is this _suddenly?_ ” Hasima protests. 

“Alright,” Viren gives up the effort to jog his memory about the elf, and no one’s bothered to introduce her. “I have to ask. Who _are_ you?”

The three of them, Sigrin, Hasima, and the elf, all go silent for a brief moment and then, all at once, just _dissolve_ into barely-contained snickering, while Claudia looks at him like he’s grown an extra head. 

“What? I don’t--”

_“Dad._ I swear, under literally any other circumstances, I mean if I didn’t trust mom’s judgment--”

“Claudia, if you understand this, then _tell me._ ”

“You great numpty,” says the elf, interrupting Soren before he can speak when he opens his mouth to answer. “I _killed_ you. Ring a bell?”

_Ah._ There’s really no etiquette for this situation, is there? What falls out of his mouth in a defensive splutter is: “Well, I had a lot going on that day.”

That only heightens the round of exhausted, keyed-up laughter, his children joining in this time.

“No spell for resurrecting someone’s fashion sense, I guess.” Hasima mutters into her cup as she takes a sip, sparking further cackling. 

“You know, Viren,” Sigrin struggles to speak, catching his eyes. “You might say dealing with us is… _a difficult undertaking.”_

Rayla snorts. Claudia’s tearing up, Soren’s braced on Raum and even _Raum_ is howling, all of the tension just exploding from the only outlet it’s been given. 

It would be a dramatic understatement to say that laughing at himself isn’t usually easy for Viren, but everything about this is just surreal enough that for once, he is caught up in the moment, and he manages not to deny himself the unwinding of the spring.

In the fullness of the day, things do _eventually_ turn to the plan.

No one hurries, though.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do I say except WOO, MAGEFAM ALL IN ONE PLACE, literally one of the biggest goals I had when started this and it only took me a year and a couple hundred thousand words!
> 
> As you can probably tell, the other thing I associate with ocean is _communication_
> 
> Also, love how one of the morals of Opeli's story is: don't piss off the librarians.
> 
> If you've never seen a pumice raft, look that up, it's wild.
> 
> Also, linking back to my tumblr because I got a delightful commission from @pickwickles on twitter of the Rayllum moment from this chapter [here](https://bringmefleshandbringmewine.tumblr.com/post/641695000106876928/fic-update) so if you didn't follow that to get here, check it out, it's cute!


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